*54D DIFFICULTY OF DISCRIMINATION. [CHAP. n. 



than are at present recorded and distinguished, is usually 

 known by the term Guan * ; this, however, is the specific 

 name of the Penelope cristata in Temminck's admirable 

 account of the bodily forms of the tribe, and it would 

 be better and more conducive to precision, to retain 

 Penelope as the generic term. We should consequently 

 decide to adopt it as such in the present chapter, did 

 not the length of the word, as well as the previous 

 currency of the shorter term, render it somewhat incon- 

 venient for familiar use. But anything is better than 

 confusion of ideas. The various species of Penelope have 

 been the despair and plague of scientific naturalists 

 and skin-merchants, in consequence of the puzzling 

 similarities and gradations in their external appear- 

 ance. Some writers, adopting an idea which they 

 have inherited from their predecessors, get out of the 

 difficulty, by saying that these slight varieties in plu- 

 mage and outward form are only the usual and necessary 

 consequences of domestication, whereas, although the 

 birds are most easily tamed, we cannot find any proof 

 of a score of individuals having been reared in domes- 

 ticity, either in South America or in Great Britain. 

 The circumstance that some species at least are hatched 

 in a less developed state than other gallinaceous chicks, 

 and remain nestlings as long as ten or twelve dayst, ap- 



* " The Quam is as big as an ordinary Hen Turkey, of a blackish 

 dun colour; its bill like a Turkey's; it flies about among the Woods; 

 feeds on Berries, and is very good meat." Mr. Dampier's Voyages 

 to the Bay of Campeachy, An. 1676, Vol. ii., Part 2., p. 66. 



f " Ces oiseaux construisent leur nid au milieu des arbres bien 

 touffus, et le plus pres du tronc qu'ils peuvent, de sorte qu'on a bien 

 de la peine a les decouvrir. Lorsque les oaufs sont eclos, la mere 

 nourrit les petits dans le nid, jusqu'a ce qu'ils soient un peu grands, 

 et que leurs plumes commencent a sortir ; alors, ages seulement de 

 douze a quinze jours, ils descendent a terre avec leur mere, qui les 



