THE TURKEY. 139 



THE WILD TURKEY. 



As the common wild turkey is confessedly the origin 

 of all our domestic varieties, a description of it, as it 

 exists in a state of nature, cannot but prove interesting. 

 Bartram, the prince of Canino, (Charles Lucien Bona- 

 parte,) Audubon, and others, have given graphic 

 pictures of its habits, founded on actual observation, ot 

 flocks in their native woods, upon which authorities 

 most of the following description is founded : 



The male wild turkey, when full grown, is nearly 

 four feet in length, and more than five in extent ot 

 wing. The irides are dark-brown. The head, (which 

 is very small in proportion to the body,) and half ot 

 the neck are covered by a naked bluish skin continued 

 over the upper half of the neck and uneven with 

 warty elevations, changeable red on the upper portion, 

 and whitish below, interspersed with a few scattered 

 black hairs. The flaccid and membranous naked skin, 

 also changeable on the lower part of the neck, extends 

 downwards into large wattles. A wrinkled conical 

 fleshy protuberance, capable of elongation and with a 

 pencil of hairs at the tip, takes its rise from the base 

 of the bill, where the latter joins the front. When 

 this excrescence is elongated under excitement, it cov- 



