THE SPIRIT OF THE HERD 121 



the farms, as to seem like " tame villatic fowl." 

 And so, indeed, the farmers do look upon them, 

 jealously guarding and feeding the flocks in win- 

 ter and quick to resent any illegal shooting of the 

 birds. In some parts of the East the China pheas- 

 ant is as completely naturalized and almost as 

 much domesticated as in Oregon. Here about 

 me in Massachusetts the village folk are even 

 complaining that the birds are raiding their gar- 

 dens. They are too easily checked ever to be- 

 come a nuisance here as the rabbit did in Australia 

 or the mongoose has in Jamaica; but perhaps we 

 shall need to adopt them, domesticate them in 

 order to save them and protect ourselves against 

 them. They are pretty nearly as tame as the 

 pigeon and as ready for domestication as the 

 guinea or the turkey must have been. 



But the tame turkey is essentially a wild bird, 

 and none of our farmyard creatures shows more 

 strikingly than he how hardly feather-deep is the 

 domestication which he wears. He has learned 

 nothing new in his hundreds of years in the farm- 

 yard (he was domesticated by the Indians of 

 Mexico long before the ""discovery" of America) ; 

 nor has he forgotten one of the old wild things 



