1S60.] Notes on tie Races of Rein Deer. 387 



has remarked of the Caeaika moscecata ;* and the Camivora of 

 Montezuma's menagerie were fed on the flesh of domestic Turkeys. 



* ' Kevue Critique des Oiseaux cV Europe,' p. 108. Were the G-eese of tltis 

 species which were " bred to supply feathers for ornaments" in the now ruined 

 city of Quiche (lat. 15° N.), which, like Mexico, had its zoological and botanical 

 gardens attached to its palace ? (Stephens's Incidents of Travel in Central 

 America, II, 179.) I have not access to the original authorities, and know of no 

 traveller more thoroughly indifferent to all matters of Natural History than was 

 Mr. Stephens, in a country, too, so teeming with objects of interest in its Fauna 

 and Flora. In the hunts of that most exquisitely plumaged bird, the Ocellated 

 Turkey (Meleagkis ocellata), where so void of fear that he knocked one over 

 with a pistol (I, 397), he does not appear to have distinguished it from the 

 common wild Turkey of the United States (M. gallipavo) : and at the ruins 

 near Palenque (within the Mexican territory, in about 17° 20'), he remarks — 

 " We expected at this place to live upon game, but were disappointed. A wild 

 Turkey we could shoot at any time from the door of the palace ; but, after 

 trying one, we did not venture to trifle with our teeth upon another" (II, 320). 

 Just as, in this country, an old Peafowl has the merited reputation of being tough, 

 as has likewise an aged gander ! But it does not follow that all are not excel- 

 lent eating when of a proper age. (Indeed, another writer describes the flesh 

 of the Ocellated Turkey as " most delicious-eating." Proc. Lin. Soc. 1859, 

 pt. 1, p. 62). The Jaguar (Feeis onca) is indifferently styled by Mr. Stephens 

 both ' Tiger' and ' Leopard ;' and the Cougar or Puma (P. concolor) is of course 

 his ' Lion.' This was to have been expected ; but that the most superficial 

 of observers shoidd see the Ocellated Turkey and pass no remark on its extra- 

 ordinary beauty is somewhat surprising. At least it is not probable that the 

 wild Meleagkis mexicana occurs so far southward even as Palenque ; and at 

 the modern village from which the neighbouring ruins derive their current name, 

 the author mentions having procured a domestic Turkey for provender. 



It may seem strange that the M. ocellata, in addition to M. mexicana, was 

 not domesticated by the populous race which the Spaniards found so highly 

 civilized (in some respects) over a vast extent of country which it inhabits ; 

 but neither have the Jungle-fowls of S. India and Ceylon respectively (Callus 

 Sonnebatii and G. Stanleyi v. Lafayettii) been domesticated, while their con- 

 gener of N. India and of all S. E. Asia and its archipelago, even as far as Timor, 

 (G. feeetjglneus v. bankivus,) has been diffused in a domestic state over the 

 world. Mr. Gosse remarks that — " The common Turkey is, so far as European 

 knowledge is concerned, indigenous to the greater Antilles; having been found by 

 the Spanish discoverers already domesticated by the Indians ; and the European 

 domestic breed is descended from the West Indian, and not from North American 

 parentage." (Birds of Jamaica, p. 329.) He gives no authority for the statement, 

 and its accuracy is more than doubtful. As the late Mr. Broderip remarked — 

 " Mexico was discovered by Crijalva in the year 1518 : and we soon after find a 

 description of the Turkey as one of the productions of the country by Gomarra 

 and Hernandez, the latter of whom gives its Mexican name Huexototl, and 

 makes mention of the wild birds as well as of the tame. Oviedo, whose work 

 was published in Toledo in 1526, describes the Turkey well, as a kind of Peacock 

 of New Spain, tvhich had been carried over to the islands and the Spanish main, 

 and was about the houses of the Christian inhabitants." (Broderip's Recreations 

 in Natural History.) This statement of Oviedo quite disposes of Mr. Gosse's 

 assertion of its being indigenous to the greater Antilles. 



In tracing the southern natural distribution of the genus Meleagkis, it should 

 be borne in mind that the so-called " wild Turkeys" of Guiana, mentioned by various 

 authors, are Cttrassoivs, often by their own shewing ; while that of Paraguay is no 

 other than the Psophia crepitans ( Vide ' Letters from Paraguay, Brazil, and the 

 Plate,' by C. B. Mansfield, M. A., 1856, p. 533) ; and that the Bindons sauvages, 



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