WILD TURKEY. 
183 
the bill entirely, and depend two or three inches below 
it. The neck is of a moderate length and thickness, 
bearing on its inferior "portion a pendent fascicle of 
black rigid hairs, about nine inches long. The body is 
thick, somewhat elongated, and covered with long 
truncated feathers ; these are divided into very light 
fuliginous down at base, beyond which they are dusky; 
to this dusky portion succeeds a broad, effulgent, 
metallic band, changing now to copper colour or bronze 
gold, then to violet or purple, according to the incidence 
of light ; and at tip is a terminal, narrow, velvet black 
band, which does not exist in the feathers of the neck 
and breast ; the lower portion of the back, and the 
upper part of the rump, are much darker, with less 
brilliant golden violaceous reflections ; the feathers of 
the inferior part of the rump have several concealed, 
narrow, ferruginous, transverse lines, then a black band 
before the broad metallic space, which is effulgent 
coppery ; beyond the terminal narrow black band is an 
unpolished bright bay fringe. The upper tail-coverts 
are of a bright bay colour, with numerous narrow bars 
of shining greenish ; all these coverts are destitute of 
the metallic band, and the greater number have not 
the black subterminal one ; the vent and thighs are 
plain brownish cinereous, intermixed with paler; the 
under tail-coverts are blackish, glossed with coppery 
towards the tip, and at tip are bright bay. 
The wings are concave and rounded, hardly surpassing 
the origin of the tail; they have twenty-eight quill 
feathers, of which the first is shortest, and the fourth 
and fifth longest, the second and ninth being nearly 
equal ; the smaller and middling wing-coverts are 
coloured like the feathers of the body ; the greater 
coverts are copper violaceous, having a black band 
near the whitish tip ; their concealed web is blackish, 
sprinkled with dull ferruginous : in old birds, the 
exterior web is much worn by friction amongst the 
bushes, in consequence of which those feathers exhibit 
a very singular, un webbed, curved appearance. The 
spurious wing, the primary coverts, and the primaries, 
