18G0.] Notes on the Baees of Bein JDeer. 387 



has remarked of the Caraiba mosciiata ; # and the Carnívora of 

 Montezuma's menagerie were fed on the flesh of domestic Turkeys. 



* c Revue Critique des Oiseaux d' Europe,' p. 108. Were the G-eese of this 

 species which were " bred to supply feathers for ornaments" in the now ruined 

 city of Quiche (lat. 15° N.), which, like México, liad its zoological and botanical 

 gardens attached to its palace ? (Stephens's Incidents of Travel in Central 

 America, II, 179.) I have not access to the original authorities, and know of no 

 traveller more thoroughly indifferent to all matters of Natural History than was 

 Mr. Stephens, in a country, too, so teeming with objects of interest in its Fauna 

 and Flora. In the hunts of that most exquisitely plumaged bird, the Ocellated 

 Turkey (Meleageis ocellata), where so void of fear that he knocked one over 

 with a pistol (I, 397), he does not appear to have distinguished it from the 

 common wild Turkey of the United States (M. gallipavo) : and at the ruins 

 near Palenque (within the Mexican territory, in about 17° 20'), he remarks — 

 " We expected at this place to live upon game, but were disappointed. A wild 

 Turkey we could shoot at any time from the door of the palace ; but, after 

 trying one, we dicl not venture to trine with our teeth upon another" (II, 320). 

 Just as, in this country, an oíd Peafowl has the merited reputation of being tough, 

 as has likewise an aged gander ! But it does not follow that all are not excel- 

 lent eating when of a proper age. (Indeed, another writer describes the flesh 

 of the Ocellated Turkey as " most delicious-eating." Proc. Lin. Soc. 1859, 

 pt. 1, p. 62). The Jaguar (Felis onca) is indiíferently styled by Mr. Stephens 

 both ' Tiger' and ' Leopard ;' and the Cougar or Puma (F. concoloe) is of course 

 his ' Lion.' This was to have been expected ; but that the most superficial 

 of observers should see the Ocellated Turkey and pass no remark on its extra- 

 ordinary beauty is somewhat surprising. At least it is not probable that the 

 wild Meleageis mexicana occurs so far southward even as Palenque ; and at 

 the modern village from which the neighbouring ruins derive their current ñame, 

 the author mentions having procured a domestic Turkey for provender. 



It may seem strange that the M. ocellata, in addition to M. mexicana, was 

 not domesticated by the populous race which the Spaniards found so highly 

 civilized (in some respects) over a vast extent of country which it inhabits ; 

 but neither have the Jungle-fowls of S. India and Ceylon respectively (Galltts 

 Sonneeatii and Gr. Stanleyi v. Lafayettii) been domesticated, while their con- 

 gener of N. India and of all S. E. Asia and its archipelago, even as far as Timor, 

 (Gr. peeeugdíeus v. bankivus,) has been diflused in a domestic state over the 

 world. Mr. Gosse remarks that — "The common Turkey is, so far as European 

 knowledge is concerned, indigenous to the grealer Antüles ; having been found by 

 the Spanish discoverers already domesticated by the Indians ; and the European 

 domestic breed is descended from the West Indian, and not from North American 

 parentage." (Birds of Jamaica, p. 329.) He gives no authority for the staterr.jht, 

 and its accuracy is more than doubtful. As the late Mr. Broderip remarked — 

 " México was discovered by Grijalva in the year 1518 : and we soon after find a 

 description of the Turkey as one of the productions of the country by Gomarra 

 and Hernández, the latter of whom gives its Mexican ñame Jluexototl, and 

 makes mention of the wild birds as toell as of tlie tame. Oviedo, whose work 

 was published in Toledo in 1526, describes the Turkey wcll, as a kind of Peacock 

 of New Spain, which liad been carried over to the i.slands and the Spanish main, 

 and was about the houses of the Christian inhabitants." (Broderip's Recrealions 

 in Natural History.) This statement of Oviedo quite disposes of Mr. Gosse's 

 assertion of its being indigenous to the greater Antilles. 



In tracing the southern natural distribution of the genus Meleageis, it should 

 be borne in mind that the so-called " wild Turkeys" of Guiana, mentioned by various 

 authors, are Curassoios, often by their own shewing ; wlúle that of Paraguay is no 

 otlier tlian the Psophia crepitans (Vide 'Letters from Paraguay, Brazil, aud the 

 Píate,' by C. B. Mansfield, M. A., 1856, p. 533) ; and that the hindons sauvages, 



3 B 



