12 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
according to the old doggerel which is assigned to the pe- 
riod of Henry VIII: 
“ Turkies, carps, hoppes, piccarel and beere, 
Came into England in one year.” 
The poet who wrote these lines was wrong so far as the 
carp is concerned, for that is mentioned in the Book of 
St. Albans, but the turkey is not even referred to in the 
feast given by Archbishop Nevills to Edward IV, nor in 
the Earl of Northumberland’s Household Book, which 
dates as late as 1512. After the bird was introduced into 
Great Britain, it must have increased rapidly, as Barring- 
ton says, that turkey chickens, or powts, formed a por- 
tion of a Sergeant’s feast in 1555; and Tusser, in his 
“Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie,” places 
them among the Christmas fare of farmers, in 1585; for, 
in describing a dinner, he says: , 
“ Beefe, mutton, and porke, shred pies of the best, 
Pig, veale, goose and capon, and turkie well drest, 
Cheese, apples, and nuts, jolie carols to heare, 
As then in the countrie is counted good cheare.” 
According to Blumenbach, the bird was introduced 
into Germany six years after it appeared in England, but 
the first heard of it in France was at the marriage feast 
of Charles IX, in 1570. 
The domestic turkey was, for a long time, supposed to 
be descended from the wild species found in the eastern 
portion of the United States; but Gould, in a paper read 
before the London Zodlogical Society in 1856, proved 
that its progenitors belonged to the Mexican variety, 
which differs in some details from its more northern con- 
gener. The latter may be readily identified by the tips of 
the tail feathers and the upper tail-coverts, which are of a 
chestnut-brown color, whereas these parts are tipped with 
white in the former. The Mexican variety is also a lit- 
tle more brilliant in coloring, and the gloss is more green- 
ish. When thetail and tail-coverts of a turkey are black, 
