THE TURKEY PREHISTORIC 27 



sportsman; while, finally, they are easily domes- 

 ticated and therefore have a great commercial 

 value everywhere. 



The extensive literature on wild and domesti- 

 cated turkeys is by no means confined to the Eng- 

 lish language, for we meet with many references 

 to these fowls, together with accounts and descrip- 

 tions of them, distributed through prints and 

 publications of various kinds, not only in Latin, 

 but in the Scandinavian languages as well as 

 in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and doubt- 

 less in others of the Old World. Some of these 

 accounts appeared as long ago as the early part 

 of the sixteenth century, or perhaps even ear- 

 lier; for it is known that Grijalva discovered 

 Mexico in 1518, and Gomarra and Hernandez, 

 whose writings appeared soon afterward, gave, 

 among their descriptions of the products of that 

 country, not only the wild turkey, but, in the 

 case of the latter writer, referred to the wild as 

 well as to the domesticated form, making the dis- 

 tinction between the two. 



In order, however, to render our history of 

 the wild turkeys in America as complete as pos- 



