1877.] The Wild Turkey and its Domestication. 329 
place at night, although they wander off through the fields for a 
mile or more during the day, but they always get a ration of 
corn about sunset. Last fall the flock counted one hundred and 
ten, and was the finest I ever saw together. I have had turkeys 
on my table the past winter not eight months old that weighed 
seventeen pounds dressed, though some of the young hens did 
not exceed nine pounds. I have sent to the farm several thor- 
ough-bred cocks at different times, but as they were from my 
domesticated stock they did not seem to add much to the wild- 
ness of the birds. 
My experiments establish, first, that the wild turkey may be — 
domesticated and that each succeeding generation bred in domes- 
tication loses something of the wild disposition of its ancestors. 
Second, that the wild turkey bred in domestication changes its 
form and the color of its plumage and of its legs, each succeed- 
ing generation degenerating more and more from those brilliant 
colors which are so constant on the wild turkey of the forest, so 
that it is simply a question of time— and indeed a very short 
time — when they will lose all of their native wildness and be- 
come clothed in all the varied colors of the common domestic tur- 
key ; in fact be like our domestic turkey, — yes, be our domes- 
tic turkey. 
Third, that the wild turkey and the domestic turkey as freely 
interbreed as either does with its own variety, showing not the 
least sexual aversion always observed between animals of differ- 
ent species of the same genus, and that the hybrid progeny is as 
vigorous, as robust, and fertile as was either parent. 
It must be already apparent that I, at least, have no doubt that 
our common domestic turkey is a direct descendant of the wild 
turkey of our forests, and that therefore there is no specific differ- 
ence between them. If such marked changes in the wild turkey 
occur by only ten years of domestication, all directly tending to 
the form, habits, and colorings of the domestic turkey, — in all 
things which distinguish the domestic from the wild turkey, — 
what might we not expect from fifty or a hundred years of domes- 
tication? I know that the best ornithological authority at the 
present time declares them to be of a different species, but I 
submit that this is a question which should be reconsidered in the 
light of indisputable facts which were not admitted or established 
at the time such decision was made. 
There has always been diffused among the domestic turkeys of 
the frontiers more or less of the blood of the wild turkey of the 
