150 THE TURKEY. 



reluctant steps, yet such is the rapidity with which 

 settlements are extended and condensed over the sur- 

 face of this country, that we may anticipate a day at 

 no distant period, when the hunter will seek the wild 

 turkey in vain. 



The wooded parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennes- 

 see, and Alabama, the unsettled portions of the states 

 of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois, 

 the vast expanse of territory north-west of these states, 

 on the Mississippi and Missouri, as far as the forests 

 extend, are more supplied than any other parts of the 

 Union with this valuable game, which forms an im- 

 portant part of the subsistence of the hunter and trav- 

 eller in the wilderness. It is not probable that the 

 range of this bird extends to, or beyond, the Rocky 

 Mountains. The Mandan Indians, who, a few years 

 ago, visited the city of Washington, considered the 

 turkey one of the greatest curiosities they had seen, 

 and prepared a skin of one to carry home for exhibi- 

 tion. 



In some parts of Florida, Gfeorgia, and the Caroli- 

 nas, the wild turkey is still common, but less so in 

 the western parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Some, 

 also, are said to exist in the mountainous districts of 

 Sussex county, New Jersey. In New England and 

 Lower Canada, they were formerly very abundant, 

 but as their places of resort became settled and thickly 

 peopled, they retired and sought refuge in the remotest 

 recesses of the interior, until they entirely disappeared. 



Thus far has our sketch applied to the general his- 

 tory and description of the wild turkey ; and as the 

 tame variety resembles its unreclaimed progenitor, 

 in most of its marked peculiarities, namely, its ramb- 

 ling habits, its manner of roosting, the antipathy of 

 the males to the eggs, often to the young, in the 

 secrecy in which the female prefers to incubate, and 

 in the tenderness of her young, I will next consider 

 the turkey in a domesticated state. 



