Show A none should blame thanks than evl s y ak giving givina bird for mental incapacity D for H of his efforts go toward tl ft development e ament of flavor A A V Z ENOR ANOR DON 1301 TURKEY played a brilliant part in history even before becore tho spaniards discovered him along with mexico in 1518 long before that he had been worshiped by azteca aztecs i cs later when his rel religious iglow vogue was past he was given honorable mention as a bird of honor hondr atthe at the marriage banquet of a king so 90 superior it a viand was he considered when first introduced to europe that in a constitution set forth by cranmer in 1541 turkey Is named as oneff one of the greater fowls of w which aich an eccle ecclesiastic sl a I 1 tic wa was to have but one in a aishe but he speedily multiplied to sue such an extent that not no later than 1 1655 two iwo turkeys and four turkey chicks were served at a feast of the sergeants at arms in Lon london dori turkeys Turkey sat at that period were mentioned in connection with cranes and alvans as important lm por tant and rich items of it a banquet A little later in 1573 turkeys were used anthe on the tables of bf english husbandmen for the christmas christinas feast in tha the meantime they were we deremore remore more than ihan plentiful jn in their theirl home iome land where turkeys continued to sell for about six rix cents bents apiece aple ce as late as the apet nineteenth th century for six cents in those good old days a turkey weighing about twelve pounds could be bought by b Y a good shopper it if the family needed a turkey weighing awen twenty ty five or thirty pounds it was necessary to pay as much as a quarter but it must be remembered that six cents I 1 in n abose hose dus counted ji a good deal more than it does in id this the turkey that the aztecs azteca worshiped was probably either the Blex mexican ican i wild turkey luikey nv which Is ls known by the white touches 0 on its iti tall covers and qu quills its I 1 rr or more appropriately tho the turkey of of honduras and other lothert parts of south america whose brilliant plumage sp spotted almost alinosi as gloriously with vivid giors colors as as a peacock somehow allies it par particularly avith with that vivid pa early aly people the turkey which strolled dout out of the forests of new england an and d furnished so marcellous marvellous marv ellous a banquet for ur puritan forefathers was a handsomer jird bird than that of mexico in the opinion ot orsome some lovers of beauty cut but not so brilliant a one as the honduras turkey the american wild turkey which really belongs to thanksgiving was the north norb American wild turkey luikey found throughout u the eastern united states and canada scientifically it Is known as the americana its plum plumage i age Is baack blacky shaded with bronze in the rays of chesun the sun the bird gleams to ta a beautiful harmony of black copper gold and bronze and the turkey alkes likes the rays of the them sun he hates damp weather wea thee not alone because it Is 1 bad for hla his health but because it if obscures his beauty I 1 it Is generally believed at present that all the turkeys of the world have descended from the three forms known know nas as the north american bird which has just been described the mexican Alex ican bird and the bird the turkey which was first introduced into europe may have been carried thero there by the spaniards from mexico or the results may have taken icken it sack ayick across the waters from one of their scattered stations in he great woods of canada in any event one of its representatives figured at the garringe warr war lage ringe banquet of charles IX and was regarded hs as of bf sufficient importance ao 0 o be mentioned in the reports of that festivity the mexican turkey Is the wild bird of mexico which also came over the lino into the southern part of the united states Alele agris Gall Gallo Is the name that Is gene generally Fally employed to describe this turkey it Is somewhat shorter in the shank than the northern species its body color Is a me metallic taille maik sli sh with bronze brone this Is thought to be the species pe cles that the early first bore back to spain and england the white tips of its plumage also have sug suggested geste d that it Is to this bird rather than ahan to the itte wild yI ov of i north america that roost most of the domestic fowls owe their origin the turkey Oce llatA which Is smaller than the others ling a bare head and neck its body plumage Is bronze an and dgreen green banded with gold bianze and varied with spots oreye brilli brilliant abi colors LIue blue red and black why the turkey ts Is called the tur tui 7 when its origin f Is admittedly purely occidental as a subject that has puzzled many persons there are several reasons given elven by thosa who have delved deeply into this problem ro blein and aid one Is privileged I 1 to ta takelia kelil 9 cli choice alce in the firsta place it Is stated that the turkey was originally supposed to have hae come from asia alit thus at a time when a preat great stretch of terrI territory tery 9 an the A asiatic blaile continent was called turkey the bird derived its name from its supposed origin another apeci speculative chronicler records that the indians called the bird birli florkee ee and that froni from fails ats its tt common name was created then again it Is somewhat generally believed that thai the bird named itself by its peculiar utterances which are translated as turk tur turk burkee ke again still more subtle philosophers have traced the naming of the he bird to its L kinship in the matter of polygamous habit the turks ov over er the water certainly no turbaned subject of the sultan eyen in the days when harems hares were considered an article of the fhe true religion was I 1 1 ever more tenacious of his privileges in this regard than the turkey cock of barnyard or forest turkeys were also at one time su supposed apo ed to have come front from africa afric a and they were confused with gul guineas heas the errors in their acea title naming era are buein due to this contusion confusion when in 1021 af after ter making their first harvest hardest the pilgrims de decreed ere ad that thai there should be a three days festival which was wa s really the fl first thanksgiving wild turkeys already had become known as a delicious food and they furnished the malfi stay ot of the feast the old blone pioneers ere so badly off isi Is seems in some ways way s as we wb have b been e en led to In imagine for although they were deprived of the joys of tinned meats and vegetables and cold storage and similar blessings turkeys were so BO plentiful that it Is recorded it w was as customary to refer to them as bread another ehron chronicler sets forth the fhe fact that the breast of the wild turkey when cooked in butter was esteemed by even the epicures epi bpi cures curek among the explorers but in spite of their abbrid abundance anee turkeys wet were e regarded with favor even by the red meu beij if one is to judge by the tol following lowing prayer which they uttered 0 great being I 1 thank thee that I 1 have obtained the use of my legs again so that I 1 am ablerto able to walk about and kill turkeys it was not alone in early new england that the bird was regarded with vu uch ch favor as an edible isaac de Rasler lea les in 1627 writes a description of and ilet details alls the method of hunting them in the new netherlands there are also very large turkeys running wild they have very ddn iding le gsand run so extraordinarily fast that generally we take savages when we i go hem for when one lias deprived them of the pow power e r of flying they ye trun so fast that we ire cannot catch them unless their legs are hurt alma also 1 Turkey shave been called the greatest game bird of this country and the methods of taking faking them have been many john hunter who was captured by ans and spent some time in c captivity in his memoirs written IQ in 1824 tells how tl the I 1 e indians made a decoy bird from the skin of a turkey fol llda towed odthe the turkey tracks until they came upon a flock and then part partially lall displaying their heir decoy and the gobbling noise made by the cock drew off first one and then of the fhe flock who being soe socially lally inclined came along tr to investigate the newcomers among the indians the children were expected to kill turkeys with their blow guns these were hollow bollow reeds in which arrows wire were placed and blown blod out with such force that being beina directed at the eye of the creature they often brought hint him down children as young as eight years were successful at this tort sort of shooting adrian van der donck says that turkeys were sometimes caught by dogs in the snow during the seventeenth century but generally they were shot at night from trees they slept in the trees in large flocks and often selected the same spot many nights in succession at AL other times them the indians would lay roots of which the turkeys were fond jn ln small streams and take the birds as they were in the th e bet of getting thee roots in virginin virginia the trap or pert pea was much used this trap was built in the forest and leading to it was a long train of corn the trap was a simple affair built of logs laid one upon another and having rough rails laid across the top there was a trench dug under the lowest logs which fenced in the pen pea in this trench corn was scattered and the turkey following the trail of this delicacy for some dl di stanco oft off would finally come to the trench which seemed to be quite providentially strewn with an unusually rich supply he followed foll owea the great bright path of rich food to his destruction the turkeys lack of intelligence when it comes to penning him up is one of the reasons why a great many mady americans have not been in accord with benjamin franklins idea that the turkey find and not the eagle should be the bird of our country A writer describing the shooting of turkeys in the latter half of the nin nineteenth century in michigan speaks of the use of aig 9 hollow bone of the turkeys wing which in the of an expert can be made to reproduce perfectly thi the piping sound of the turkey hen sometimes also turkeys were hunted on horseback in Virg virginia lnla according to an old writer this was not dot hb says though we gai galloped loped our horses we could not overtake them ith the e tu turkeys j run i nearly two hundred and awen twenty ty yards b before e fore they took flight the consta constant nt P practice of our forefathers in shooting game deve developed lobed a great ninny many fine turkey shots and it Is recorded that in the latter half of the seventeenth century a man was thought a bad shot if he the very head of a wild turkey on top of the highest tree with a single ball to pot hunting and to the practice of luring the turkeys by imitating the call of the hen in the spring sylvester D judd of the biological survey of the united states department of agriculture largely attributes the extermination of the wild turkey in many parts of the united states where f formerly it was especially abundant trapping the turk turkeys ey s I 1 in n pens also helped along the extermination although the turkey Is generally speaking not a particularly hardy bird being subject to various forms of indigestion etc he Is varied in his diet and usually lias has a good appetite some of the things which the wild turkey likes best and which the domesticated bird will by no means scorn are grasshoppers crickets keis locusts tadpoles small lizards garden seeds and snails one oae turkey which was examined by a scientist was found to have partaken partaker par taken of a meal 1 including ne luding the following viands pue one harvest par vest spider one centipede one thousand legs one Ich ichneumon neuman fly two yellow jackets one grasshopper three katydids wild cherries grapes berries of dogwood and the sorghum two chestnuts twenty five whole acorns a I 1 few alder aider calkins calkin sand and five hi Iii indred seeds of tick trefoil the domestic turkeys habit babit of hunting grasshoppers and worming tobacco sho shows ws that his delight in the primitive pleasures of the table has not altered in his more carefully provided for existence the chicks both of the wild and the domestic turkey are delicate and especially must they be protected during the damp weather audubon says that the mother bird among the wild turkeys thoroughly understands the delicacy of her offspring end faint when it Is wet she feeds the chicks buds from fram the spice bush with medicinal intent exactly as the mother of a brood of youngsters erb prescribes doses of quinine when influenza has taken the family lit lii its clutches As soon as the young birds can fly well enough to take their place on the roost with their mothers the most delicate period of childhood what 11 might be called the teething stage Is thought to be over buti but to a successful turkey farmer the boults are three montla old ld before they can be taught anything they are then taught that they should roost high so ns as to out of the way of night prowlers turkeys retain so much of their wild nature that they do not like ro inside a 11 house and indeed they do not core care even for artificial perches when pos elble albl they greatly prefer tall trees ns as a ro place to any roost that has been especially coris constructed for them this characteristic renders them especially easy victims for night aalders in addition to the human desperadoes of t this lils description there tire are the coyotes and hawks always to be guarded against lu in some parts of the country jn addition to illnesses which come from digestive disorders colds the terrible scourge of blackheads etc depredations of the night raider the turkey farmer always hns has to consider also the feuds among the members of his 11 its flock flo ck which frequently rage high nevertheless the careful turkey tu arky ra rancher lihs h as found it if possible to conserve cou serve his birds and make a large profit from them A woman turkey rancher who has had good experience in the business lostin losan one season only twelve birds out of a flock of 1500 at first the young turkeys are fed on broad and milk hard boiled yolk of egg and perhaps some chopped alfalfa later they tire are fed cracked grain but as soon as they ure tire abl able e to take to the range it Is no longer necessary to feed them the range supplies all that they need both green and dry and hap happy happala Is the householder who Is able to purchase for his table turkeys turkey 8 w whose 11 0 ae habitat 11 has as been an oa oak k forest nothing la Is more delicious than a turk turkey ey which has fed freely on acorns although there are many great turkey ranches and whole communities which live principally upon the raising of turkeys for market such as caera tes tem whose annual turkey trude preceding thanksgiving includes thousands of turkeys bound for the new york markets as a rule turkeys are raised in small mail groups on farms which are interested in other commodities they are often the sole role dependence ot of the farmers wife tor for pocket money throughout the year and many a farmers daughter also has been able to make a shining appearance taher in her world of fashion principally through the successful marketing I 1 n g ot of the turkey brood on the ri farms ot of the united states there were according to careful s statistics i taken some year sago ago only turkeys texas led among th the estates producing theother the other states which were large producers were wera missouri illinois lown iowa ohio and indiana the state of rhode island noted as it Is for its turkeys produced only only but the quality of the rhode island turkeys always has been excellent and they usually bring prices vastly in excess of those mother fro |