—a few of them. The next day at one of the 

 landings a colored boy brought a fine gobbler 

 aboard which he had shot back in the swamp. 

 In the tops of the tall cottonwoods all through 

 the wilder stretches of the South and the great 

 Southwest, scattering flocks of the native wild 

 turkeys still roost. They are so few and wild, 

 however, that the naturalist who would study 

 the habits of the bird is almost compelled, nowa- 

 days, to go to the barn-yard, tame and unro- 

 mantic as that locality is. 



If one does not mind the setting, he will find 

 the barn-yard a more convenient place of study 

 and quite as good as the primeval forests ; for 

 the- turkey is a maddeningly perverse, persistent 

 creature, that centuries of civilizing still leave 

 as unchanged in habit as in looks. "When wild 

 turkeys in the market hang side by side with 

 tame ones, only a keen-eyed naturalist can tell 

 from their appearance which birds had never 

 seen a barn-yard, and which had descended by a 

 traceable barn-yard line from the year 1526. No 

 less persistent have been the old wild habits of 

 the birds. 



Like our house-cats, the turkeys wear a cloak 

 [265] 



