THE TURKEY HISTORIC 75 



"The part of the country occupied by the 

 Spanish during the first few years of the conquest 

 in which wild turkeys occur is the eastern slope 

 of the Cordillera in Vera Cruz, and there is every 

 reason to suppose that this must have been the 

 original home of the birds domesticated by the 

 natives of that region. 



"Gould's description of the type of M. mexi- 

 cana is not sufficiently detailed to determine the 

 exact character of this bird, but fortunately the 

 type was figured in Elliot's "Birds of North 

 America." ... In addition Gould's type 

 apparently served for the description of the adult 

 male M. gallopavo in the 'Catalogue of Birds 

 Brit. Mus.' (xxii, p. 387), and an adult female 

 is described in the same volume from Ciudad 

 Ranch Durango. . . . Thus it will be- 

 come necessary to treat M . gallopavo and M. mexi- 

 cana as at least sub specifically distinct. What- 

 ever may be the relationship of M. mexicana to M. 

 gallopavo, the M. g. merriami is easily separable 

 from M. g. mexicana of the Sierra Madre of western 

 Mexico, from Chihuahua to Colima. Birds from 

 northern Chihuahua are intermediate." 



