234 WILD TURKEY. 
for it. In Canada, and the now densely peopled parts of the 
United States, wild turkeys were formerly very abundant; 
but, like the Indian and buffalo, they have been compelled to 
yield to the destructive ingenuity 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 and reluctant steps, yet such is the rapidity with which 
settlements are extended and condensed over the surface 
of this country, that we may anticipate a day, at no dis- 
according to Dugdale, in his ‘Origines Juridicales, for their inauguration 
dinner, among other delicacies, two turkeys and four turkey chicks, 
which, as they were rated at only four shillings each, while swans and 
cranes were charged ten shillings, and capons half-a-crown, could not 
have been esteemed very great rarities. Indeed, they had become so 
plentiful in 1573, that honest Tusser, in his ‘ Five Hundred Points of 
Good Husbandry, enumerates them among the usual Christmas fare at 
a farmer’s table, and speaks of them as ‘ ill neighbors’ both to ‘ peason’ 
and to hops. 
“A Frenchman, named Pierre Gilles, has the credit of having first 
described the turkey in this quarter of the globe, in his editions to a 
Latin translation of AZlian, published by him in 1535, His description 
is so true to nature, as to have been almost wholly relied on by every 
subsequent writer down to Willoughby. He speaks of it as a bird that 
he had seen ; and he had not then been farther from his native country 
than Venice ; and states it to have been brought from the New World. 
That turkeys were known in France at this period is further proved by 
a passage in Champier’s treatise ‘ De re Cibaria,’ published in 1560, and 
said to have been written thirty years before. This author also speaks 
of them as having been brought but a few years back from the newly 
discovered Indian islands. From this time forward, their origin seems 
to have been entirely forgotten ; and for the next two centuries we 
meet with little else in the writings of ornithologists concerning them 
than an accumulation of citations from the ancients, which bear no 
manner of relation to them. In the year 1566, a present of twelve 
turkeys was thought not unworthy of being offered by the municipality 
of Amiens to their King, at whose marriage, in 1570, Anderson states 
in his ‘ History of Commerce,’ but we know not on what authority, they 
were first eaten in France. Heresbach, as we have before seen, asserts 
that they were introduced into Germany about 1530; and a sumptuary 
law made at Venice, 1557, quoted by Zanoni, particularises the tables 
at which they were permitted to be served.”—Eb. 


