] 34 PHASIANID^E. 



take flight together towards the opposite bank. The 

 older birds cross, without much difficulty, rivers even a 

 mile in width ; but the young and weak often fail to reach 

 the other side and have to swim for it, which they do well 

 enough. If, in the endeavour to land, they approach an 

 inaccessible bank, they resign themselves to the stream 

 for a few moments, in order to gather strength for one 

 grand effort ; but many of the weaker, which cannot rise 

 sufficiently high in the air, fall again and again into the 

 water, and are finally drowned." 



The Wild-turkey subsists principally on nuts, beech- 

 masts, acorns, wild strawberries, grapes, and dew-berries ; 

 corn, when it can be got, and grasshoppers and other 

 insects whenever they chance to come in the way. Though 

 properly speaking not migratory, these birds range very 

 widely in search of food, and the common impulse to 

 desert an exhausted country for fresh ground causes them 

 to wander as well as to assemble together, as just de- 

 scribed, in the flocks which are commonly met with in 

 the month of October; but they invariably return to 

 certain localities in which they may be said to be 

 resident. 



Though formerly abounding in every part of the 

 country, from the Mexican Gulf to the Great lakes, the 

 increase of population and extension of cultivated tracts 

 have now confined them entirely to one or two districts. 



