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LITTLE is known of the early history of the domestic 

 Turkey. Writers of the sixteenth and seventeeth 

 centuries seem to have been ignorant about it, and to have 

 regarded it as the guinea-fowl or pintado of the ancients, a 

 mistake which was not cleared up until the middle of the 

 last century. The name it now bears, and which it received 

 in England, where it is reputed to have been introduced in 

 1541, was given to it from the supposition that it came orig- 

 inally from Turkey. As far back as 1573 we read of it as 

 having been the Christmas fare of sturdy British yeomanry. 



Oviedo, a Spanish writer, speaks of it as a kind of peacock 

 that was once very abundant in New Spain, as Mexico was 

 called in his day, and which had already, in 1526, been 

 transported in a domestic condition to the West Indies and 

 the Spanish Main, where it was maintained by the Christian 

 settlers. 



Among the luxuries possessed by Montezuma, the proud, 

 dignified, semi-cultured monarch of the Aztecs, was one of 

 the most extensive zoological gardens on record. Repre- 

 sentatives of nearly all of the animals of the country over 

 which he reigned, as well as others, brought at great expense 

 from long distances, were to be found within its walls. 

 Turkeys, it is said, were daily supplied in large numbers to 

 the carnivores of his menagerie. 



Respecting the time when this bird was first reclaimed in 

 Mexico from its wild state, there can be no idea. Probably 

 it has been domesticated from remote antiquity. No doubt 

 exists, however, as to its being reared by the Mexicans at 



