THE WILD TURKEY. 213 



tare at a farmer's table, and speaks of them as " ill 

 neighbors" both to "peason" and to hops. 



A Frenchman named Pierre Gilles has the credit of 

 having first described the Turkey in this quarter of the 

 globe, in his additions to a Latin translation of jElian, 

 published by him in 1535. His description is so true 

 to nature, as to have been almost wholly relied on by 

 every subsequent writer down to Willughby. He speaks 

 of it as a bird that he had seen ; and he had not then 

 been further from his native country than Venice ; and 

 states it to have been brought from the New World. 

 That Turkeys were known in France at this period is 

 further proved by a passage in Champier's Treatise de 

 Re Cibaria, published in 1560, and said to have been 

 written thirty years before. This author also speaks of 

 them as having been brought but a few years back from 

 the newly discovered Indian islands. From this time 

 forward their origin seems to have been entirely for- 

 gotten, and for the next two centuries we meet with 

 little else in the writings of ornithologists concerning 

 them, than an accumulation of citations from the an- 

 cients, which bear no manner of relation to them. In 

 the year 1566 a present of twelve Turkeys was thought 

 not unworthy of being offered by the municipality of 

 Amiens to their king; at whose marriage, in 1570, 

 Anderson states, in his History of Commerce, but we 

 know not on what authority, they were first eaten in 

 France. Heresbach, as we have before seen, asserts 

 that they were introduced into Germany about 1530; 

 and a sumptuary law made at Venice in 1557, quoted 

 by Zanoni, particularizes the tables at which they were 

 permitted to be served. 



So ungrateful are mankind for the most important 

 benefits, that not even a traditionary vestige remains of 

 the men by whom, or the country from whence, this 



