194 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
“ Three or four are usually seen feeding together. The cubs 
are remarkably small in proportion to the full-grown animal.”— 
United States Exploring Expedition, Lieutenant Wilkes. 
THE WILD TURKEY. 
MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO. 
“ This noble and beautiful bird, the origin, it appears to be 
conceded, of our domestic Turkey, the pride, this of the forest, as 
that of the poultry yard, is now, like its congener, the Pinnated 
Grouse or Heath Hen, all but extinct in the Eastern and Middle 
States of the Union. 
“ A few of these noble birds, it is said, still exist in Vermont 
and Maine; Massachusetts unquestionably contains a few in 
her mountainous inland counties. The north-eastern angle of 
New-York also, in all probability, has not been entirely desert¬ 
ed by this magnificent species of game, and I have reason to 
believe that a single drove yet exists in the State ol New-Jer¬ 
sey among the wild ridges of the Musconetcong Hills, west of 
the Greenwood Lake. From Pennsylvania westward, they be¬ 
come more frequent, and in all the wooded portions of the 
West to the Rocky Mountains, so far South as in the forest 
ground of Texas, and Northward into Upper Canada, though 
yearly becoming less abundant, they are still plentiful. They 
are irregularly migratory in search of food, and irregularly gre 
garious. I have great doubts in my own mind whether they 
breed eastward of the Pennsylvanian Alleghanies, it being 
rather my opinion that the few birds of this once abundant spe¬ 
cies which are now found in the eastern States, are mere strag¬ 
glers from the southern extremity of the great Apalachian chain; 
it being worthy of remark, that it is solely along the line, or on 
some of the offsetting spurs of that great mountain range that 
they are found at present. 
For some inexplicable reason, Wilson has not described or 
