430 



POULTRY CULTURE 



The Wild Turkey as frequently seen alive on farms and in poul- 

 try exhibitions, and dead with the feathers on in the market, is about 

 the size of the average mongrel turkey found on farms, but more 

 compactly built, higher stationed, and closer feathered, appearing 

 slimmer, though generally heavier than domestic birds of the same 



Fig. 458. Bronze Turkey cock. (Photograph by E. J. Hall) 



apparent size. In color it is a black-bronze. The skin of the 

 comb, head, and wattle is a darker, more purplish red than in 

 the domestic stock. 



Tlie Bronze Turkey is the wild turkey, of the type just described, 

 as it develops in domestication, under highly favorable conditions 

 of life, with selection for the improvement and greater brilliancy 

 of the original color and markings. The type seems to have existed, 

 pure in some specimens but in general more or less mixed with 

 stocks longer under domestication (and often degenerated), for 

 two centuries or more, but not until the modern period in poultry 



