Note 30 — JOURNAL.

The wild turkey.—This is the largest and finest of our game birds and, although native to North America, it bears a foreign name from the following circumstances. Specimens of the living bird, as well as its eggs, were sent by the early Jesuit missionaries to the old world on Spanish and Portuguese ships, entering Europe through Portugal. It was as yet unnamed, and was at first referred to by writers of that period merely as the "Jesuit bird." As it became known, the demand for the stranger was supplied chiefly from Turkey where, for some reason, it thrived exceedingly well, and in time it came to be familiarly spoken of as "the turkey." Gradually becoming tame, and proving to be quite prolific, it was recognized as a great addition to the luxuries of the table. Speedily becoming a favorite in every country to which it was taken, the great forests and game preserves throughout Europe were gradually stocked with it and it was also raised as a domestic fowl. To-day the American turkey, derived as stated, is found wild in all the great forests of the old world, while the domesticated bird is abundantly raised everywhere in Europe for the markets. In ancient times, we are told, the choicest game fowls brought to a feast were pheasants and peacocks. Emigrants to America brought over with them the domesticated bird to its native land, but under a borrowed name. Washington, in his journal, April 7, 1748, records the fact that one of his men that day had killed a wild turkey weighing 20 pounds. The domesticated bird, when permitted to attain the age of two or three years, and being well fed during the winter months, often reaches the weight of 30 pounds or more. As marking in a degree the devastation of the late war and the enforced abandonment of plantations in the section of Virginia adjacent to the city of Washington, it is a fact worthy of record, that in 1876 the newspapers chronicled the news that the thickets and pine forests which were grown up since the armies left were tenanted by wild deer and turkeys; foxes, etc. And to this day, December 25, 1890, wild turkeys are brought to the Washington market killed in Fairfax county, Va., within ten miles of Washington city.—Gentlemen's Magazine.