CHAP. iii.J FORMERLY IN HOLLAND. 275 



stated them into favour. Proper restorations are made 

 to their rightful owners : the Bird of Paradise regains 

 its long-lost legs and feet, and ceases to pass its whole 

 life in unresting flight ; the Halcyon has to yield her 

 sea-borne nest, which retires to the bottom of the ocean, 

 and becomes fixed to the rocks in its true character of 

 Neptune's Cup. But when the fabled monster really 

 shows signs of life, we are perplexed as well as 

 delighted. When a thing, which we took to be no 

 better than a made-up popinjay for holiday wits to 

 shoot at, gives tokens of being somewhere in actual 

 existence, we know not what to make of it. And so it 

 is with the Crested Turkey. 



For some time, others, as well as myself, had been 

 puzzled by reading in Temminck's " Pigeons et Gal- 

 linacees,"* a passage, the translation of which follows. 

 " The Crested Turkey is only a variety, or sport of 

 nature, in the species ; it only differs in that it has a 

 crest of feathers, sometimes black, sometimes white; 

 and these Crested Turkeys are sufficiently rare. Ma- 

 demoiselle Backer formerly kept, in her magnificent 

 menagerie near the Hague, a flock of Turkeys of a 

 beautiful Tsabelle yellow approaching to chestnut ; they 

 all had an ample crest of pure white."! Buffon also 

 quotes Albin to a similar effect. 



What could this mean? Such instances are zealously 

 sought after by those who wish to exalt the innate, 

 self-moulding powers of organic beings, the idol 

 Nature, in the atheistical sense in opposition to the 

 creative providential omnipotence of the Word, in the 



* Vol. ii. p. 387. 



f See Albin, Natural History of Birds, vol ii. pi. 33. 



T 2 



