34 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [ANNO 1781. 



duced from the wild as decoy birds to seduce those in a state of nature within 

 their reach. When disturbed, they do not take wing, but run out of sight. 

 It is usual to chace them with dogs, when they will fly and perch on the next 

 tree. They are so stupid or so insensible of danger, as not to fly on being shot 

 at; but the survivors remain unmoved at the death of their companions. Wild 

 turkies are now become most excessively rare in the inhabited parts of America, 

 and are only found in numbers in the distant and most unfrequented spots. 

 The Indians make a most elegant clothing of the feathers. They twist the 

 inner webs into a strong double thread of hemp, or inner bark of the mulberry 

 tree, and work it like matting; it appears very rich and glossy, and as fine as 

 a silk shag. They also make fans of the tail; and the French of Louisiana were 

 wont to make umbrellas by the junction of A of the tails. 



Turkies are natives only of America, or the New World, and of course 

 unknown to the ancients. Since both these positions have been denied by some 

 of the most eminent naturalists of the J 6th century, I beg leave to lay open, 

 in as few words as possible, the cause of their error. Belon, the earliest of 

 those writers who are of opinion that these birds were natives of the old world, 

 founds his notion on the description of the Guinea fowl, the Meleagrides of 

 Strabo, Athenaeus, Pliny, and others of the ancients. I rest the refutation on 

 the excellent account given by Athenaeus, taken from Clytus Milesius, a disciple 

 of Aristotle, which can suit no other than that fowl. " They want," says he, 

 " natural affection towards their young; their head is naked, and on the top is a 

 hard round body like a peg or nail: from their cheeks hangs a red piece of flesh 

 like a beard. It has no wattles like the common poultry. The feathers are 

 black, spotted with white. They have no spurs; and both sexes are so like as 

 not to be distinguished by the sight." Varro and Pliny take notice of the 

 spotted plumage and the gibbous substance on the head. Athenaeus is more 

 minute, and contradicts every character of the turkey, whose females are re- 

 markable for their natural affection, and differ materially in form from the males, 

 whose heads are destitute of the callous substance and whose heels, in the males, 

 are armed with spurs. Aldrovandus, who died in 1(305, draws his arguments 

 from the same source as Belon; I therefore pass him by, and take notice of the 

 greatest of our naturalists Gesner, who falls into a mistake of another kind, 

 and wishes the turkey to be thought a native of India. He quotes yElian for 

 that purpose, who tells us, " That in India are very large poultry not with 

 combs, but with various coloured crests interwoven like flowers, with broad 

 tails neither bending nor displayed in a circular form, which they draw along 

 the ground as peacocks do when they do not erect them; and that the 

 feathers are partly of a gold colour, partly blue, and of an emerald colour." 

 This in all probability was the same bird with the peacock pheasant of 



