284 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
African origin, while in Egypt the Arabic name is Dik 
rum, fowl of Turkey. 
Precisely why it should have been called turkey by 
the English it is hard to say, except that as Turkey was 
a part of the Far East, it may have been supposed to 
have some relation to India. It has been suggested 
that the name by which we know the bird is a corrup- 
tion of a Hebrew word tukki, said to mean peacock, 
that this term was applied to the turkey, when it was 
received in Spain, by the Jews, who then monopolized 
the business of selling poultry, and that from this point 
of first introduction the name spread with the bird over 
a part of Europe. 
This bird, taken to Europe by the Spaniards soon 
after the conquest, was the Mexican turkey. 
The common wild turkey once found over most of 
eastern North America was for a long time the only 
form known in the United States, and this was thought 
to be the progenitor of all the domesticated races of 
turkeys. In 1856, however, the English naturalist, 
Gould, described the Mexican turkey as a distinct 
species, and much later other observers called attention 
to a turkey from Florida differing slightly from the 
ordinary wild turkey, and to yet another different 
one from the Rio Grande. Later still, E. W. Nelson 
found that the turkey of Arizona presented constant, if 
slight, differences from the wild turkey of the plains 
and that of Mexico, and described it as Merriam’s 
turkey. 
To the untrained eye the differences between certain 
