128 PHASIANID.E. 



portion of the continent. Ogilby, in his curious work on 

 America, dated 1671, quoting Hudson, the celebrated 

 North American explorer, remarks, that not only in 

 Maryland and Carolina were these birds common, but even 

 as far north as the State of New York; speaking of 

 which, he says, " the country abounds chiefly in turkeys, 

 whose plenty deserves no less admiration than their bulk, 

 and the delicious taste of their flesh ; for they go feeding 

 forty or fifty in a flocke, and weigh sometimes forty or 

 fifty pounds apiece. The natives either shoot them, or 

 take them with a bait stuck on an angle." 



From the above evidence it will therefore be seen, 

 that while we have accounts of their existence at an early 

 date in great abundance over a very large area of the con- 

 tinent of North America, the earliest record we have of 

 their existence in the West Indies, specially mentions the 

 fact of their having been brought thither from the main 

 land. 



The slight value to be attached to mere local names 

 is well exemplified in our own misnomer, " Turkey," 

 which we have absurdly bestowed on this bird for no 

 better reason than that at the time of its introduction into 

 England most foreign articles were vulgarly supposed to 

 come from that country; while the French dindon, 

 which is a corrupted abbreviation of coq d'Inde; the 

 Italian gallo d'India, and the German Calecutische Halm, 



