TURKEY-HUNTING. 5 



I ran to my prize. His heavy beard and long spurs showed him 

 to be an old gobbler, probably one of those lonely birds that, 

 expatriating themselves from their flocks, wander about in self- 

 doomed celibacy. Throwing my game over my shoulders, I re- 

 turned to camp and to breakfast, well contented with my success. 



If the reader is desirous of knowing what is a wild turkey, by 

 turning to Audubon's, Wilson's, or Bonaparte's Ornithology he 

 will discover it to be of the gallinaceous order, with conical papilla 

 on the forehead, neck corrugated, beset with cavernous caruncles, 

 frontal caruncle blue and red, and with scutellate toes, scabrous 

 above and papillae beneath, etc. After pondering on this descrip- 

 tion he may suspect that his ideas on the subject may be rather 

 confused, and doubt if he would be able to sketch the bird from 

 the description given. 



Let him imagine a full-grown black turkey-cock of the 

 domestic species, with a much smaller head, made shy and 

 cautious in its movements, restless with its head and neck, high 

 stepping over obstacles with its red, bare, sinewy legs, and erect, 

 slender, and game-like in its bearing. Its eye is full and soft, 

 with a hazel iris. The wild turkey is to its barnyard kinsman 

 what the racehorse is to the carthorse. See him in the early morn 

 as he stands on some elevation and welcomes the dawn, and 

 announces to his family his movements for the day. His scarlet 

 wattles lie. pendent on a neck that one moment curves like a 

 swan's and in another is erect like a crane's ; his comb is a soldier's 

 plume ; his eye is full and hazel black, gleaming with something 

 of a human look from his shapely head, which is covered by the 

 wrinkles of skin and a few scattered hairs, and tinged with blue 

 and red. His neck swells very gradually to his body, and is 

 burnished with a gloss of bronze and gold, that varies with every 

 light. There is no pomposity or clumsiness about his air ; on the 

 contrary, his whole manners are those of an accomplished gal- 

 lant. 



See him among the hens. Their gentle looks are on him, and 

 they follow his unspoken directions with perfect readiness. They 

 ramble hither and thither as fancy leads them beneath the wild 

 plum-trees, picking the stray fruit that has ripened before its 



