(Ao, ae BR 
414 a) 
Though once very plentlful in the southern and western counties of Ontario, — 
even up to within a few years ago, it is now becoming very rare and is found 
probably only in the counties of Essex and Kent and even there it is only a 
-Iatter of a short time when it must become extinct. 
The habits of this bird are so well known in the domestic fowl, whose habits 
sare similar, that it is unnecessary to describe their love-making which usually 
begins early in February, but the hen does not begin to lay for perhaps a month __ 
later, when she makes her nest on the ground beside a log or in some thicket, and Pent, 
oor usually from ten to fifteen eggs almost exactly like those of thetame 
bird. | 
The food of the turkey is corn and other grain, grass and other plants, seeds 
fruits, beetles, small lizards, tadpoles, ete. Inthe south it prefers to all otherfood 
pecan nuts and wild grapes, upon which it becomes exceedingly fat. 4 
It isa very difficult bird to hunt, being wary, running at great speed, and if 
come upon suddenly flushing as readily as the grouse or quail] and alighting in the 
highest trees after a long flight. They are generally taken by stratagem. One 
of the most common methods of trapping wild turkeys is by means of a trap 
made by laying up asquare pen of poles or rails gradually narrowing at the top ; 
under one side of it a trench is dug large enough to admit one turkey, then corn 
is spread about the woods at some distance and leading up to the pen where a 
train of grain is laid into it through the opening. The bird readily enters this 
and once within is so stupid that it constantly flies towards the top or sidesin 
its efforts to get out, and in fact anywhere except through the opening by which = 
it entered. In this way sometimes a whole flock may be entrapped. “a 
t ang 
Below is given the opinion of the iate Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian __ 
Institute, America’s best ornithological authority, as to the origin of the domestic = 
turkey. wit ; 
“ As with nearly all the animals which have been brought under domestica- __ 
tion by man, the true origin of the common barnyard turkey was fora long time 
a matter of uncertainty. As a well known writer (Martin) observes: “So. % 
involved in obscurity isthe early history of the turkey, and so ignorant do the 3 
writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appear to have been about it 
that they have regarded it as a bird known to the ancients by the name of 
Meleagris (really the guinea-fowl or pintado) a mistake which was not cleared up € 
till the middle of the eighteenth century. The appellation of “Turkey,” which _ 
this bird bears in England, arose from the supposition that it came originally 
from the country of that name, an idea entirely erroneous, as it owes its origin to 
the New World. Mexico was first discovered by Grigalva in 1518. Oviedo 
speaks of the turkey as a kind of peacock abounding in New Spain, which had 
already, in 1526, been transported in a domestic state to the West India Islands 
and the Spanish Main, where it was kept by the Christian colonists. i 
It is reported to have been introduced into England in 1541. In 1573 it 
had become the Christmas fare of the farmer. | 
Among the luxuries belonging to the high condition of ¢.vilization exhibited 
by the Mexican nation at the time of the Spanish conquest, was the possoessin by 
Montezuma of one of the most extensive zoological gardens on record, numbering 
nearly all the animals of that country with others brought at much expense from — 
great distances, and it is stated that turkeys were supplied as food in large num- 
bers daily to the beasts of prey in the menagerie of the Mexican emperor. No 
idea can be formed at the present day of the date when this bird was first — 
reclaimed in Mexico from its wild condition, although probably it had been known — 
in a domestic state for many centuries. There can, however, be no question of " 
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