C l 31 ] 



This feems to be a general anfwer to all fuch negative au- 

 thorities, becaufe the traveller certainly deferves little or no 

 credit, but in what relates to particulars feeii or not feen by 

 him, and in his own route. 



Whenever any of thefe writers, however, happen to alTert, 

 that turkies are to be found in Afia, M. Buffon will not give fhem 

 credit, as in the cafe of Du Halde, whom he believes, when he 

 fays, that " the Chinefe have them not, but from other countries* ," 

 becaufe he fpeaks of what he had been an eye-wit nefs of. But 

 M. Buffon pays no regard to the fame authority, when he flares 

 that theTe birds are very common in the Eaft Indies, becaufe Du 

 Halde is fuppofed to have received this account from others. 

 Now I have always underftood, that Du Halde had never been 

 in China, or any other part of Afia, having compiled his hiftory 

 from materials collected by others who had vifited that moil ex- 

 traordinary empire. 



M. Buffon having endeavoured to prove that no turkies have 

 been found in Afia, in order to fupport the exclufive claim of 

 America, hath banifhed this fort of poultry likewife from Africa, 

 afferting, upon the authority of Bofman, that thofe which they 

 have near Senegal were originally brought from Europe q . 



from the teftimony of this traveller, who, indeed, does take upon him- 

 felf to affert, that there are no turkies in all A/iu, though he never was 

 but once in any part of the Indies, viz. in 1649, when he failed from 

 Gombroon, in Ferfia, to Suratte, Ceylon, and Batavia. But this is not 

 all, for he hath refuted himfelf by the publication of his brother's ac- 

 count of the kingdom of Tunquin, where there is a print representing 

 the ceremony of a funeral in that part of Afia, and the animals which 

 are to be facxificed, amongft which there is a Turkey-cock. See the 

 third volume of Tavernier's Travels.. 



p Buffon's Qrn. t. II. p. 150. Thefe other countries, however, moil 

 probably refer to other parts of Afia. 



* Hift.. Nat. des Oif. t. II. p. 151. 158. 



Bofman's 



