212 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 



more positive authority is Hakluyt, who in certain 

 instructions given by him to a friend at Constantinople, 

 bearing date in 1582, mentions, among other valuable 

 things introduced into England from foreign parts, 

 '' Turky-Cocks and hennes" as having been brought in 

 " about fifty years past." We may therefore fairly 

 conclude that they became known in this country about 

 the year 1530. Why they were denominated Turkeys, 

 an appellation which bears no resemblance to their 

 name in any other language, we have no probable 

 grounds even for conjecture. Willughby supposes the 

 name to be derived from a notion that they were 

 brought from Turkey. Such an erroneous opinion may 

 possibly have arisen from that confusion which appears 

 to have at first existed between them and the Guinea- 

 fowls, the latter being probably commonly obtained 

 from the Levant, and being also in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury exceedingly rare in England. 



The Turkey, on the contrary, speedily became a 

 common inhabitant of our poultry-yards and a standing 

 dish at all festivals. So early as the year 1541, we 

 find it mentioned in a constitution of Archbishop Cran- 

 mer, published in Leland's Collectanea, by which it 

 was ordered that of such large fowls as Cranes, Swans, 

 and Turkey-Cocks, " there should be but one in a dish." 

 The serjeants-at-law, created in 1555, provided, accord- 

 ing to Dugdale in his Origines Juridiciales, for their 

 inauguration dinner, among other delicacies, two Tur- 

 keys and four Turkey-chicks, which, as they were rated 

 at only four shillings each, while Swans and Cranes 

 were charged ten shillings, and Capons half a crown, 

 could not have been esteemed very great rarities. In- 

 deed they had become so plentiful in 1573 that honest 

 Tusser, in his Five Hundreth Points of Good Hus- 

 bandry, enumerates them among the usual Christmas 



