creature was obliged to keep out of their way, so the fishes took to the waters using their tails to swim away from man, the birds took to their wings, and the animals took to their legs; and by these means the birds, beasts, and fishes have kept out of man's way ever since.

Before dealing with the wild turkeys as they are to-day, it will be well to make a short study of their prehistoric and historic standing; this has been ably done for me by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt of Washington, D. C., who has very kindly written for this work the next two chapters entitled "The Turkey Prehistoric," and "The Turkey Historic."

CHAPTER III
THE TURKEY PREHISTORIC

Probably no genus of birds in the American avifauna has received the amount of attention that has been bestowed upon the turkeys. Ever since the coming to the New World of the very first explorers, who landed in those parts where wild turkeys are to be found, there has been no cessation of verbal narratives, casual notices, and appearance of elegant literature relating to the members of this group. We have not far to seek for the reason for all this, inasmuch as a wild turkey is a very large and unusually handsome bird, commanding the attention of any one who sees it. Its habits, extraordinary behavior, and notes render it still more deserving of consideration; and to all this must be added the fact that wild turkeys are magnificent game birds; the hunting of them peculiarly attractive to the sportsman; while, finally, they are easily domesticated and therefore have a great commercial value everywhere.

The extensive literature on wild and domesticated turkeys is by no means confined to the English language, for we meet with many references to these fowls, together with accounts and descriptions of them, distributed through prints and publications of various kinds, not only in Latin, but in the Scandinavian languages as well as in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and doubtless in others of the Old World. Some of these accounts appeared as long ago as the early part of the sixteenth century, or perhaps even earlier; for it is known that Grijalva discovered Mexico in 1518, and Gomarra and Hernandez, whose writings appeared soon afterward, gave, among their descriptions of the products of that country, not only the wild turkey, but, in the case of the latter writer, referred to the wild as well as to the domesticated form, making the distinction between the two.

In order, however, to render our history of the wild turkeys in America as complete as possible, we must dip into the past many centuries prior to the discovery of the New World by those early navigators. We must go back to the time when it was questionable whether man existed upon this continent at all. In other words, we must examine and describe the material representing our extinct turkeys handed us by the paleontologists, or the fossilized remains of the prehistoric ancestors of the family, of which we have at hand a few fragments of the greatest value. These I shall refer to but briefly for several reasons. In the first place, their technical descriptions have already appeared in several widely known publications, and in the second, what I have here to say about them is in a popular work, and technical descriptions are not altogether in place. Finally, such material as we possess is very meagre in amount indeed, and such parts of it as would in any way interest the general reader can be referred to very briefly.

The fossil remains of a supposed extinct turkey, described by Marsh[1] as Meleagris altus from the Post-pliocene of New Jersey, is, from the literature and notices on the subject, now found to be but a synonym of the Meleagris superba of Cope from the Pleistocene of New Jersey. At the present writing I have before me the type specimen of Meleagris altus of Marsh, for which favor I am indebted to Dr. Charles Schuchert of the Peabody Museum of Yale University. My account of it will be published in another connection later on.

Some years after Professor Marsh had described this material as representing a species to which I have just said he gave the specific name of altus, it would appear that I did not fully concur in the propriety of doing so, as will be seen from a paper I published on the subject about fifteen years ago[2]. This will obviate the necessity of saying anything further in regard to M. superba.

So far as my knowledge carries me, this leaves but two other fossil wild turkeys of this country, both of which have been described by Professor Marsh and generally recognized. These are Meleagris antiqua in 1871, and Meleagris celer in 1872. My comments on both of these species will be found in the American Naturalist for July, 1897, on pages 648, 649.[3]