98 
WILD TURKEY. 
keep in better condition, than the Tarne, on the same quantity of 
food. 
Besides the above mentioned half breed, some domesticated 
Turkeys, of a very superior metallic tint, are sold in the Philadel¬ 
phia and New-York markets as wild ones. Many of these require 
a practiced eye to distinguish their true character, but they are 
always rather less brilliant, and those I examined had a broad 
whitish band at the tip of the tail coverts, and another at the tip 
of the tail itself, which instantly betrayed their origin, the wild 
ones being entirely destitute of the former, and the band on the 
tip of the tail being neither so wide nor so pure. 
In the following description we give the generic as well as the spe¬ 
cific characters of the Wild Turkey, in order to make it complete. 
The male Wild Turkey, when full grown, is nearly four feet in 
length, and more than five in extent. The bill is short and robust, 
measuring two inches and a half to the corner of the mouth; it is 
reddish, and horn colour at tip; the superior mandible is vaulted, 
declining at tip, and overhangs the inferior, being longer and wider; 
it is covered at base by a naked cere-like membrane, in which the 
nostrils are situated, they being half closed by a turgid membrane, 
and opening downwards; the inferior mandible slightly ascends 
towards the tip: the aperture of the ear is defended by a fascicle 
of small, decomposed feathers; the tongue is fleshy and entire; the 
irides are dark brown. The head, which is very small in propor¬ 
tion to the body, and half of the neck, are covered by a naked bluish 
skin, on which are a number of red wart-like elevations on the 
superior portion, and whitish ones on the inferior, interspersed with 
a few scattered, black, bristly hairs, and small feathers, which are 
still less numerous on the neck; the naked skin extends farther 
downwards on the inferior surface of the neck, where it is flaccid 
and membranous, forming an undulating appendage, on the lower 
part of which are cavernous elevations or wattles. A wrinkled, 
fleshy, conic, extensible caruncle, hairy and penicellated at tip, 
