WILD TURKEY. 
arises from the bill at its junction with the forehead; when the bird 
is quiescent, this process is not much more than an inch and a half 
long; but when he is excited by love or rage, it becomes elongated, 
so as to cover the bill entirely, and depend two or three inches 
below it. The neck is of a moderate length and thickness, bear¬ 
ing 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; then- 
concealed web is blackish, sprinkled with dull ferruginous: in old 
