It may be said here, however, that the word gallopavo is from the Latin, gallus a cock, and pavo a peafowl, while the meanings of the several words silvestris, merriami, osceola, and intermedia are self-evident and require no definitions.
Audubon, who gives the breeding range of the wild turkey as extending "from Texas to Massachusetts and Vermont" (Vol. V., p. 56), says of them in his long account: "I have ascertained that some of these valuable birds are still to be found in the states of New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine. In the winter of 1832-33, I purchased a few fine males in the city of Boston"; and further, "At the time when I removed to Kentucky, rather more than a fourth of a century ago, turkeys were so abundant that the price of one in the market was not equal to that of a common barn-fowl now. I have seen them offered for the sum of three pence each, the birds weighing from ten to twelve pounds. A first-rate turkey, weighing from twenty-five to thirty pounds avoirdupois, was considered well sold when it brought a quarter of a dollar."[9]
From these remarks we may imagine how plentiful wild turkeys must have been on the North American continent, when Aristotle wrote his work "On Animals," over three hundred years before the birth of Christ, upward of twenty-three centuries ago! A good many changes can take place in the avifauna of a country in that time.
How these big, gallinaceous fowls ever got the name of "turkey" has long been a matter of dispute; and not a few ornithologists and writers of note in the 16th and 17th centuries erroneously conceived that the term had something to do either with the Turks or their country. But this idea has now been entirely abandoned, for it has become quite clear that, during the times mentioned, the turkey was strangely confused with the guinea-fowl, a bird to which the name turkey was originally applied.
Later on, both these birds became more abundant, as more of them were domesticated and reared in captivity, and the fact was gradually realized that they were entirely different species of fowls. During these times, the word turkey was finally applied only to the New World species, and the West African form was thereafter called "Guinea-fowl."[10] After the word turkey was more generally applied to the bird now universally so known, some believe that there was another reason as to how it came about, and this "possibly because of its reputed call-note," says Newton, "to be syllabled turk, turk, turk, whereby it may be almost said to have named itself." (Notes and Queries, ser. 6, III, pp. 23, 369.)[11]
Plate II
Fig. 6. Superior view of the skull of an old male wild turkey; lower jaw removed. No. 9695, Coll. U. S. National Museum. Fig. 7. Lower jaw or mandible of the skull shown in Fig. 6., seen from above. Fig. 8. Superior view of a skull of a wild turkey and probably a female. Lower jaw removed and shown in Fig. 9. No. 19684, Coll. U. S. National Museum. Fig. 9. Lower jaw of the skull shown in Fig. 8. Superior aspect. Fig. 10. Upper view of the skull of a wild Florida turkey (Meleagris g. osceola); lower jaw removed and not figured. Female. No. 18797, Coll. U. S. National Museum. All the figures in this plate are reproductions of photographs of the specimens made natural size by Dr. Shufeldt. Reduced about one-fourth.
So much for the origin of the name turkey; and when one comes to search through the literature devoted to this fowl to ascertain who first described the wild species, the opinion seems to be pretty general that this was done by Oviedo in the thirty-sixth chapter of his "Summario de la Natural Historia de las Indias," which it is stated appeared about the year 1527.