t '43 ] 



Having thus endeavoured to prove that the turkey (whether 

 indigenous or not in the neighbourhood of Mexico) could not have 

 been firft introduced into Europe from that quarter of the. globe; 

 I fhall next conlider another queftion of fome moment amongft 

 the -ornithologies, whether it was the meleagris of the ancients. 



Moll: of the earlier writers on this part of Natural Hiftory 

 have rather fuppofed the meleagris to be the fame bird ; but 

 M. de BufFon contends that the meleagris was the Peintade or 

 Guiney hen. 



I will not pretend to pronounce with any pofitivenefs on this 

 point; but I muft own that I rather conceive, neither the one nor 

 the other were commonly known to the ancients, at lean 1 to the 

 Romans, nor were perhaps ufed by them or the Greeks as 

 poultry. 



My firft reafon for this is, that I do not conceive how thefe 

 Very ufeful birds, having been once introduced into Italy, could 

 have been loft, as both turkies and Guiney hens were undoubtedly 

 for fo many centuries: whereas the peacock, by no means fo 

 necefTary as either of them, was continued from the time of the 

 Romans to the prefent century. It is agreed likewife that the 

 common hen was originally introduced from Alia. 



But it may be faid, that this argument is not to hold 

 againft pofitive defcriptions of the bird, which I agree to; but let 

 us examine what thefe defcriptions are. 



Ovid, in his Eighth Book of the Metamorphofes, transforms 

 the fifters of Meleager into thefe birds, in the following lines ; 



« natis in corpore pennis 



Allevat, & tongas per brachia porrigit alas, 

 Corneaque ora facit, verfafque per aera mittit„ 



Now 



