THE WILD TURKEY. 211 



and domesticated in the houses of the Christian inha- 

 bitants. His description is exceedingly accurate, and 

 proves that before the year 1526, when his work was 

 published at Toledo, the Turkey was already reduced 

 to a state of domestication. Mexico, it should be 

 observed, was first discovered by Grijalva in 1518. 

 Gomarra and Hernandez soon afterwards described the 

 bird in question among the natural productions of that 

 country, the latter distinguishing the tame birds from 

 the wild. 



The Turkey, thus domesticated by the Spaniards, 

 seems to have found its way to England almost imme- 

 diately. This fact may be readily accounted for by the 

 extensive intercourse subsisting between the two great 

 maritime nations at that early period ; but it is some- 

 what singular that no traces of its transmission from 

 Spain should remain either in the name of the bird or 

 in popular tradition. On the other hand it is barely 

 possible that it may have been brought directly from 

 America to England by Chabot, who made such exten- 

 sive discoveries on the coast of the newly found conti- 

 nent. According to a popular rhyme, quoted by Baker 

 in his Chronicle, 



Turkeys, carps, hoppes, piccarel, and beer, 

 Came into England all in one year, 



which remarkable year is said to have been about the 

 15th of King Henry the Eighth, or 1524. Barnaby 

 Googe, an old writer on Husbandry, who published in 

 1614, speaking of " those outlandish birds called Ginny- 

 Cocks and Turkey-Cocks," says that "■ before the yeare 

 of our Lord 1530 they were not scene with us ;" but in 

 this he merely translates from Heresbach, a German 

 author whose treatise forms the basis of his work. A 



p2 



