ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY. 



THE WILD TURKEY. 



Meleagris Gallopavo, Linn. 



PLATE I. Male. 



The great size and beauty of the Wild Turkey, its value as a delicate 

 and highly prized article of food, and the circumstance of its being the 

 origin of the domestic race now generally dispersed over both continents, 

 render it one of the most interesting of the birds indigenous to the United 

 States of America. 



The unsettled parts of the States of Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and 

 Indiana, an immense extent of country to the north-west of these districts, 

 upon the Mississippi and Missouri, and the vast regions drained by these 

 rivers from their confluence to Louisiana, including the wooded parts of 

 Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama, are the most abundantly supplied 

 with this magnificent bird. It is less plentiful in Georgia and the 

 Carolinas, becomes still scarcer in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and is now 

 very rarely seen to the eastward of the last mentioned States. In the 

 course of my rambles through Long Island, the State of New York, 

 and the country around the Lakes, I did not meet with a single in- 

 dividual, although I was informed that some exist in those parts. Tur- 

 keys are still to be found along the whole line of the Alleghany Moun- 

 tains, where they have become so wary as to be approached only with 

 extreme difficulty. While, in the Great Pine Forest, in 1829, I found 

 a single feather that had been dropped from the tail of a female, but saw 

 no bird of the kind. Farther eastward, I do not think they are now to 

 be found. I shall describe the manners of this bird as observed in the 

 countries where it is most abundant, and having resided for many years in 

 Kentucky and Louisiana, may be understood as referring chiefly to them. 



