126 PHASIANIDiE. 



differences may have been brought about in the course 

 of generations by the change in food and climate, and 

 by the influences of confinement and domestication to 

 which the common turkey has been subjected, and I 

 shall show how little data there is to go upon in 

 assuming any other country than North America to be 

 the native place of its ancestors. 



From Bonaparte's account we learn that it had been 

 introduced into Spain only a very short time previously 

 to its appearance in England, which was about 1520 to 

 1524, having been taken thither by the Spaniards from 

 Mexico, about the time of the conquest of that country, 

 and by them named Pavon des las Indias. 



This appellation was evidently bestowed under the 

 impression that Mexico had originally been indebted to 

 the West Indies for the possession of this valued and even 

 then domesticated bird: an assumption which is coun- 

 tenanced at the expense of his own country by Baird, 

 the celebrated naturalist and latest writer on American 

 ornithology, who meets the fact of there being no wild 

 turkeys in any of those islands at the present day, by 

 the supposition of their gradual extinction, as in the 

 case of the dodo. 



We learn however from Prescott* that Oviedo (Rel. 



Conquest of Mexico. 



