THE WILD TURKEY. 



Meleagris Gallo-pavo. Linn. 



It is a singular fact that the origin of this, the most 

 important addition to om' domestic poultry that has 

 been made in modern times, should have been involved 

 in such obscurity, as to remain for more than two cen- 

 turies, out of the three that the bird has been known 

 to us, doubtful and undetermined. The breed seems 

 indeed to have been introduced into Europe with so 

 little ostentation, and to have spread with so much 

 rapidity, that within twenty or thirty years of its first 

 appearance, it was regarded by men of the highest 

 name in science, not as a novel importation from the 

 western world, but as a species well known to the 

 ancients, and originally derived from Africa or the East. 

 With a degree of pertinacity scarcely to be credited, 

 Belon, Aldrovandus, Gessner, and most of the writers 



BIRDS. 1' 



