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WILD TURKEY. 233 
-of Panama, south of which it is not to be found, notwithstand- 
ing the statements of authors, who have mistaken the curassow 
original introduction from the Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological 
Society. 
“The turkey domesticated by the Spaniards seems to have found its 
way to England almost immediately. This fact may be easily accounted 
for by the extensive intercourse subsisting between the two great mari- 
time nations at that early period ; but it is somewhat sineular that no 
traces of its transmission from Spain should remain, either in the name 
of the bird, or in popular tradition. On the other hand, it is barely 
possible that it may have been brought directly from America to England 
by Chabot, who made such extensive discoveries on the coast of the 
newly found continent, According to a popular rhyme, quoted by Baker 
in his Chronicle— 
‘Turkeys, carps, hoppes, pinaret, and beer, 
Came into England all in one year ;’ 
which remarkable year is said to have been about the 15th of King 
Henry the Eighth, or 1524. Barnaby Googe, an old writer on hus- 
bandry, who published: in 1614, speaking of ‘those outlandish birds 
called ginny-cocks and turkey-cocks,’ says that ‘before the yeare of our 
Lord 1530, they were not seene with us ;’ but in this he merely trans- 
lates from Heresbach, a German author, whose treatise forms the basis 
of his work. A more positive authority is Hakluyt, who, in certain 
instructions given by him to a friend at Constantinople, bearing date 
in 1582, mentions, among other valuable things introduced into England 
from foreign parts, ‘turkey cocks and hennes,’ as having been brought 
in ‘about fifty years past.’ We may therefore fairly conclude that they 
became known in this country about the year 1530. Why they were 
denominated turkeys, an appellation which bears no resemblance to their 
name in any other language, we have no probable grounds even for 
conjecture. Willoughby supposes the name to be derived from a notion 
that they were brought from Turkey. Such an erroneous opinion may 
possibly have arisen from that confusion which appears to have at first 
existed between them and the guinea-fowls, the latter being probably 
commonly obtained from the Levant ; and being also, in the sixteenth 
century, exceedingly rare in England. 
“The turkey, on the country, speedily became a common inhabitant 
of our poultry yards, and a standing dish at all festivals. So early as 
the year 1541, we find it mentioned in a constitution of Archbishop 
Cranmer, published in Leland’s Collectanea, by which it was ordered, 
that of such large fowls as cranes, swans, and turkey-cocks, ‘there should 
be but one inadish.’ The serjeants-at-law created in 1555 provided, 
