INTRODUCTION. 9 
l)y differences in color. The best known of these is the common wihl 
turkey of the Mississippi Valley and the Eastern States. The others 
are the Florida wild turkey, the Kio (Jrande turkey, and the Merriam 
turkey of the southern Kocky Mountains from Colorado south 
through New Mexico and Arizona. These birds differ in color to 
a certain extent, but have a close general resemblance. Owing to 
their size and the value set on their flesh, wild turkeys have l:)een 
hunted so persistently that they have been exterminated over much 
of their former range and have become the shyest of our game birds. 
There are remarkable exceptions to this rule, however, as their per- 
>istence up to the present day in parts of Virginia and Maryland, 
within a few miles of Washington City. This ability to maintain a 
foothold in long-settled parts of their old territory suggests the feas- 
il)ility of restocking parts of their former range. In pioneer days 
they were often destructive to cornfields, and in remote places they 
still raid grainfields, but the damage is insignificant. 
Unfortunately a number of our game birds are now gone or are 
fast disappearing from their former haunts. An awakening appre- 
ciation of the real value of some of the species and of the evident 
danger of their extermination is evinced by protective laws that 
have been enacted in recent years throughout the country. These 
laws are mainly the outcome of a realization of the value of the birds 
from the sportsman's point of view. The investigations upon which 
the j^resent report is based show that the farmer has a vastly greater 
interest at stake in the increase and protection of some of these 
birds, notably the bobwhite, than has the sportsman. In view of the 
decrease of both bobwhites and prairie hens it is important to know- 
that there is every probability that proper efforts to rear these 
birds for restocking purposes will be successful. The numbers of 
bobwhite may be readily increased by careful protection, but the heath 
hen is already extinct in the Eastern States, and the prairie hen is 
nearly or quite gone from large areas in the West where it was 
numerous a few years ago. The restocking of suitable places in the 
former range of the prairie hen and even in the former range of the 
heath hen in the coast region of Virginia and Maryland ai)pears to 
l)e quite practicable. The significance of an experiment made by 
Audubon many years ago at Henderson, Ky., is of special interest 
in this connection. In the fall he secured (JO prairie hens and, clip- 
ping their wings, turned them loose in his garden and orchard which 
contained about 4 acres. The birds quickly became tame and ** walked 
about the garden like so many tame fowls, mingling occasionally 
with the domestic poultry." The importance of the prairie hen as 
a destroyer of weeds and insects has been demonstrated, and its value 
as a food and game bird is well known. As the bird possesses such 
G5G8— No. 24—05 m 2 , 
