THE TURKEY HISTORIC 67 



Before passing to the more recent literature on 

 these birds, and what I will have to say further 

 on about their comparative osteology and their 

 eggs, it will be as well to reproduce here a few more 

 statements made by Bennett, whose work, "The 

 Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological 

 Society Delineated,' ' I have already quoted. 1 



retains the name of M. gallopavo, of Linnaeus. He stated that the 

 peculiarities of the new species consist chiefly in the creamy white tips 

 of the tail feathers and of the upper tail coverts, with some other points 

 of minor importance. I suggest that the wild turkey of New Mexico, 

 as referred to by various writers, belongs to this new species, and not to 

 the M. gallopavo." (loc. cit. p. 289.) Compare the above with what 

 Professor Baird states in the series of the Pacif. Railroad Reports, vol., 

 ix, p. 618, with the remainder of the above quoted article, which is too 

 long to reproduce here. 



x Bennett, E. T. "Publ. with the sanction of the council under the 

 superintendence of the Secretary and Vice Secretary of the Society. 

 Birds. Vol. II. London, 1835, pp. 209-224." There is a very excel- 

 lent wood-cut of a turkey illustrating this article (left lateral view), of 

 which the author says: "Our own figure is taken from a young male, in 

 imperfect plumage, brought from America by Mr. Audubon. Another 

 specimen, in very brilliant plumage, but perhaps not purely wild, forms 

 a part of the Society's Museum" (p. 223). Bennett derived most of his 

 information about the habits of the wild turkey in nature "from an excel- 

 lent memoir by M. Charles Lucien Bonaparte, in his continuation of 

 Wilson's American Ornithology." 



"In that work M. Bonaparte claims credit for having given the first 

 representation of the wild turkey; 1 and justly so, for the figures intro- 

 duced into a landscape in the account of De Laudonniere's Voyage to 

 Florida in De Bry's Collection, and that published by Bricknell in his 

 Natural History of North Carolina, cannot with certainty be referred 

 to the native bird. They are besides too imperfect to be considered as 

 characteristic representations of the species. Much about the same 

 time with M. Bonaparte's figure appeared another, in M. Viellot's Gal- 

 erie des Oiseaux, taken from a specimen in the Paris Museum. 



Newton disputes this and says: "In 1555 both sexes were characteristically 

 figured by Belon (Oiseaux, p. 249), as was the cock by Gesner in the same year, 

 and these are the earliest representations of the bird known to exist." (Diet. 

 of Birds, pd. 995, 996.) 



