WILD TURKEY. 
337 
it. In Canada, and the now densely peopled parts of the 
United States, wild turkeys were formerly very abundant; 
but, like the Indian and buffalo, they have been compelled to 
yield to the destructive ingenuity of the white settlers, often 
wantonly exercised, and seek refuge in the remotest parts of 
the interior. Although they relinquish their native soil with 
slow and reluctant steps, yet such is the rapidity with which 
settlements are extended and condensed over the surface of 
this country, that we may anticipate a day, at no distant pe- 
riod, when the hunter will seek the wild turkey in vain. 
We have neglected no means of obtaining information from 
various parts of the Union, relative to this interesting bird ; 
and having been assisted by the zeal and politeness of several 
individuals, who, in different degrees, have contributed to our 
chicks, which, as they were rated at only four shillings each, while swans and 
cranes were charged ten shillings, and capons half-a-crown, could not have been, 
esteemed very great rarities. Indeed they had become so plentiful in 1573, that 
honest Tusser, in his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, enumerates them 
among the usual Christmas fare at a farmer’s table, and speaks of them as ‘ ill 
neighbors’ both to ‘ peason’ and to hops. 
A Frenchman, named Pierre Gilles, has the credit of having first described 
the turkey in this quarter of the globe, in his additions to a Latin translation of 
JElian, published by him in 1535. His description is so true to nature, as to 
have been almost wholly relied on by every subsequent writer down to Wil- 
lughby. He speaks of it as a bird that he had seen ; and he had not then been 
further from his native country than Venice j and states it to have been brought 
from the New World. That turkeys were known in France at this period, is 
further proved by a passage in Champier’s treatise De re Ciharia, published in 
1560, and said to have been written thirty years before. This author also speaks 
of them as having been brought but a few years back from the newly discovered 
Indian islands. From this time forward, their origin seems to have been entirely 
forgotten ; and for the next two centuries we meet with little else in the wri- 
tings of ornithologists concerning them, than an accumulation of citations from 
the ancients, which bear no manner of relation to them. In the year 1566, a 
present of twelve turkeys was thought not qn worthy of being offered by the 
municipality of Amiens to their King, at whose marriage, in 1570, Anderson 
states, in his History of Commerce, but we know not on what authority, they 
were first eaten in France. Heresbach, as we have before seen, asserts that they 
were introduced into Germany about 1530 ; and a sumptuary law made at Ve- 
nice, 1557, quoted by Zanoni, particularizes the tables at which they were per- 
mitted to be served, — E d. 
VOL. III. 
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