THE TURKEY, 149 



the October migration, and through the winter, when 

 they leave the females, the middle of February bring- 

 ing a recurrence of the same scenes already described. 

 The young hens, in their turn, are to become parents, 

 and the young cocks will fight for the mastery. 



When, during the winter, a sharp frost succeeds a 

 heavy fall of snow, so as to form a hard crust on its 

 surface, turkeys will sometimes remain on their roosts 

 for three or four days or longer, declining to search for 

 food, unless indeed when farms and barns are within 

 a short distance ; they then direct their course to the 

 stacks of corn, and enter the barns and stables in quest 

 of grain. During melting snow-falls, turkeys will 

 travel very great distances, and at such extraordinary 

 speed that no hunter can keep up with them. They 

 have then a ' dangling, straggling' way of running, 

 which, awkward as it may seem, enables them to out- 

 strip any other animal. " I have often," says Audu- 

 bon, " when on a good horse, been obliged to abandon 

 the attempt to put them up, after following them for . 

 several hours. This habit of continued running in 

 rainy or very damp weather of any kind is not peculiar 

 to the wild turkey, bnt is common to all gallinaceous 

 birds. In America, the different species of grouse ex- 

 hibit the same tendency." 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 



The natural habitat of the wild turkey extends from 

 the •north-western territory of the United States to the 

 isthmus of Panama, south of which it is rarely 

 found, notwithstanding the statements of authors who 

 have mistaken the curassow for it. In Canada and 

 the now densely-peopled parts of the United States, 

 wild turkeys were formerly more abundant than at 

 present, but, like the Indian and the buffalo, they 

 have been compelled to yield to the destructive inge- 

 nuity of the white settlers, often wantonly exercised, 

 and seek refuge in the remotest parts of the interior. 

 Although they relinquish their native soil with slow, 



