Note 323 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 2)

Probably an exaggeration, although Audubon mentions one that weighed thirty-six pounds; the ordinary weight of the full-grown male is from fifteen to twenty pounds, a gobbler weighing twenty-five pounds being an unusually large bird. Yet Morton’s statement is fully borne out by other contemporary authorities. Wood says, “The Turky is a very large bird, of a blacke colour, yet white in flesh; much bigger then our English Turky. He hath the use of his long legs so ready, that he can runne as fast as a Dogge, and flye as well as a Goose: of these sometimes there will be forty, three-score and an hundred of a flocke, sometimes more and sometimes lesse; their feeding is Acorns, Hawes, and Berries, some of them get a haunt to frequent our English corne: In Winter when the Snow covers the ground, they resort to the Sea-shore to looke for Shrimps, and such small fishes at low tides. Such as love Turkie hunting must follow it in Winter after a new falne Snow, when he may follow them by their tracts; some have killed ten or a dozen in halfe a day; if they can be found towards an evening, and watched where they peirch, if one came about ten or eleaven of the clocke, he may shoote as often as he will, they will sit, unlesse they be slenderly wounded. These Turkies remain all the yeare long. The price of a good Turkie cocke is foure shillings: and he is well worth it, for he may be in weight forty pound; a Hen two shillings.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 24.) So also Josselyn: “I have heard several credible persons affirm, they have seen Turkie Cocks that have weighed forty, yea sixty pounds; but out of my personal experimental knowledge I can assure you, that I have eaten my share of a Turkie Cock, that when he was pull’d and garbidg’d, weighed thirty pound.” He adds, however, that even then [1670] “the English and the Indians having now destroyed the breed, so that ’tis very rare to meet with a wild Turkie in the Woods.” (New England’s Rarities, p. 9.) See also Two Voyages, p. 99, where the same writer says: “If you would preserve the young Chickens alive, you must give them no water, for if they come to have their fill of water, they will drop away strangely, and you will never be able to rear any of them.” John Clayton, in his Letter to the Royal Society [1688], says of Virginia: “There be wild Turkies extream large; they talk of Turkies that have been kill’d, that have weigh’d betwixt 50 and 60 Pound weight; the largest that ever I saw, weigh’d something better than 38 Pound.” (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 12, p. 30.) Williams, in his Virginia [1650], speaks of “infinites of wilde Turkeyes, which have been knowne to weigh fifty pound weight, ordinarily forty.” (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 11, p. 12.) See also Strachey’s Historie, p. 125; Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 253.