60 REPORT OF BOARD OF FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONERS. 
suffered through too much domestication and inbreeding. The total cost 
to the hunting license fund of our venture in procuring and shipping 
from Mexico to our State the wild turkeys is less than $1,900.00, which 
includes the services and traveling expenses of Mr. Yan Slyke for two 
trips. 
Some question having been raised as to the genuineness of our stock, 
we were greatly pleased to have Prof. F. E. L. Beal of the United States 
Biological Survey, who has made a study of the wild turkey of the 
United States and Mexico, advise us after a visit to the Game Farm, 
that our stock was of the best; that there could be no doubt we had 
the genuine wild turkey. This was further confirmed by Dr. T. S. 
Palmer, in charge of Game Preservation of the United States, who 
pronounced them of the best strain of wild stock that had even come 
under his observation. 
It is not commonly known that America, with special reference to 
Mexico, has given to the world the largest game bird, and perhaps the 
most important domestic fowl, in the turkey. The Pilgrims landing 
on our New England coast found them in plenty, and they filled an 
important place in the food supply of the Indians. It is reported they 
were introduced into England from Mexico in the sixteenth century, 
about 1541, and in 1573 had become the Christmas feast of the farmer. 
Prof. S. F. Baird in a report to the Agricultural Department pub¬ 
lished in 1866, speaking of the Mexican turkey, says: 
Among the luxuries belonging to the high condition of civilization exhibited by the 
Mexican nation at the time of the Spanish conquest, was the possession by Montezuma 
of one of the most extensive zoological gardens on record, numbering nearly all the 
animals of that country, with others brought at much expense from great distances, 
and it is stated that turkeys were supplied as food in large numbers daily to the 
beasts of prey in the menagerie of the Mexican Emperor. 
The well known ethnologist and ornithologist, George Bird Grinnell, 
in speaking of the wild turkey, says: 
The original wild turkey—to which the name Meleagris gallopavo was given— 
has been shown to be the bird later described by Gould as the Mexican wild turkey. 
It is notably different from the eastern form, for its tail, tail coverts, and the 
feathers of the lower rump are tipped with white or whitish, while the eastern and 
northern turkey has those feathers tipped with deep rusty or even with rich dark 
chestnut. The ordinary domestic turkey shows the whitish tippings of the feathers 
of tail, tail coverts, and lower rump ; characteristics derived from its ancestor, the 
turkey of Mexico. The Mexican turkey occupies the wooden mountain slopes bor¬ 
dering the Mexican tablelands on the south and west, ranging north to Chihuahua, 
but it does not reach the United States. Mr. Nelson has shown where it grades into 
the Merriam’s turkey on the north, while to the south, in southeastern Mexico and 
Central America, it is replaced by a striking distinct species, the brilliantly hued 
ocellated turkey. 
The eastern wild turkey, which was long considered the true Meleagris gallopavo , 
thus becomes a subspecies of the Mexican turkey, and is now known as Meleagris 
gallopavo silvestris. 
