62 OUR HUMBLE HELPERS 



of a wheel, and lets the tips of his half-opened wings 

 trail on the ground. In this grotesquely proud pos- 

 ture he turns slowly to let himself be admired from 

 all sides. From time to time a low sound, puff '-puff , 

 accompanied by a sort of convulsive stretching of the 

 wings, is the sign of his supreme satisfaction. If 

 some noise, especially whistling, disturbs him, he 

 hauls down his colors and, stretching his neck, hastily 

 gives a gloo-gloo-gloo that seems to burst from the 

 very depths of his stomach. " 



"By whistling to the turkeys feeding in the fields, " 

 said Emile, "I can make them repeat their cry as 

 often as I want to. The turkey hens do not say gloo- 

 gloo; they peep plaintively." 



"This fowl is a recent acquisition of our poultry- 

 yards," resumed Uncle Paul. "It came to us from 

 North America in the sixteenth century. As Amer- 

 ica was called West Indies in contrast with the Asian 

 or East Indies, the bird originating in the forests 

 of the New World was called the Indian cock (coq 

 d'Inde) and the Indian hen (poule d'Inde); from 

 which have come the French terms dindon and dinde. 

 For a long time the bird spread but little; it was 

 raised merely as a curious rarity. The first that ap- 

 peared on the table was, they say, at the wedding 

 feast of Charles IX. 



"The turkey lived, and still lives to-day, in a wild 

 state, in the forests of the United States of North 

 America. Its habits are described by a celebrated 

 naturalist, Audubon, 1 who, with his gun on his shoul- 



iThe quoted passages are from Audubon's "Ornithological Biog- 



