392 Notes on the Races on Rein Beer. [No. 4, 



At the present time the domestic Turkey is nowhere raised more 

 abundantly, nor is more cheaply procurable, than in the country from 

 which it thus erroneously derives its English name : for, although 

 the Musalmans of India refuse to eat its flesh, (alleging that it 

 partakes of the nature of the Hog, as shewn by the tuft of bristles 

 on its breast,) then* co-religionists of Turkey, Egypt, and even 

 Arabia (at Jidda at least, the port of Mekka), esteem it highly; and 

 at Cairo it is customary, some hours before killing one, to give it a 

 dose of rdhi, which is believed to render the flesh more tender. The 

 only Turkeys I have seen in India are of the Norfolk breed, with 

 generally black plumage ; and this, with the bare skin of the head 

 and neck, may possibly have led to a supposition that the bird is 

 akin to a common black Vulture of the country, with bare red neck, 

 the Otogtps ponticeeiakus ;* yet, if the bird had been introduced 

 by Muhammedans — say from Persia, instead of by Christians from 

 Europe, it is probable that people of that faith would have eaten the 

 Turkey here as elsewhere. Old Chardon mentions its introduction 

 into Persia from Venice by some Armenian merchants. 



* Some Turkeys which I onee possessed did actually associate, to a certain 

 extent, with a Vulture of the kind chained to a post ; that is to say, they gener- 

 ally kept near it, as if imagining the black Vulture to' be one of their own kind. 



