AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. 
ITTLE is known of the early history of the domestic 
Turkey. Writers of the sixteenth and seventeeth 
centuries seem to have been ignorant about it, and to have 
regarded it as the guinea-fowl or pintado of the ancients, a 
mistake which was not cleared up until the middle of the 
last century. The name it now bears, and which it received 
in England, where it is reputed to have been introduced in 
1541, was given to it from the supposition that it came orig- 
inally from Turkey. As far back as 1573 we read of it as 
having been the Christmas fare of sturdy British yeomanry. 
Oviedo, a Spanish writer, speaks of it as a kind of peacock 
that was once very abundant in New Spain, as Mexico was 
called in his day, and which had already, in 1326, been 
transported in a domestic condition to the West Indies and 
the Spanish Main, where it was maintained by the Christian 
settlers. 
Among the luxuries possessed by Montezuma, the proud, 
dignified, semi-cultured monarch of the Aztecs, was one of 
the most extensive zodlogical gardens on record. Repre- 
sentatives of nearly all of the animals of the country over 
which he reigned, as well as others, brought at great expense 
from long distances, were to be found within its walls. 
Turkeys, it is said, were daily supplied in large numbers to 
the carnivores of his menagerie. 
Respecting the time when this bird was first reclaimed in 
Mexico from its wild state, there can be no idea. Probably 
it has been domesticated from remote antiquity. No doubt 
exists, however, as to its being reared by the Mexicans at 
