1. As a rule, in adult specimens of M. g. merriami, the posterior margins of the nasal bones indistinguishably fuse with the frontals; whereas, as a rule, in domesticated turkeys these sutural traces persist with great distinctness throughout life.
2. As a rule, in wild turkeys we find the craniofrontal region more concaved and wider across than it is in the tame varieties.
3. The parietal prominences are apt to be more evident in M. g. merriami than they are in the vast majority of domesticated turkeys; and the median longitudinal line measured from these to the nearest point of the occipital ridge is longer in the tame varieties than it is in the wild birds. Generally speaking, this latter character is very striking and rarely departed from.
4. The figure formed by the line which bounds the occipital area is, as a rule, roughly semicircular in a domesticated turkey, whereas in M. g. merriami it is nearly always of a cordate outline, with the apex upward. In the case of the tame turkeys I have found it to average one exception to this in every twelve birds; in the exception, the bounding line of the area made a cordate figure as in wild turkeys.
5. Among the domesticated turkeys, the interorbital septum almost invariably is pierced by a large irregular vacuity; as a rule this osseous plate is entire in wild ones.
6. The descending process of a lacrymal bone is more apt to be longer in a wild turkey than in a tame one; and for the average the greater length is always in favor of the former species.
7. In M. g. merriami the arch of the superior margin of the orbit is more decided than it is in the tame turkey, where the arc formed by this line is shallowed, and not so elevated.
8. We find, as a rule, that the pterygoid bones are rather longer and more slender in wild turkeys than they are among the tame ones.
9. At the occipital region of the skull, the osseous structures are denser and thicker in the tame varieties of turkeys; and, as a whole, the skull is smoother, with its salient apophyses less pronounced in them than in the wild types. There is a certain delicacy and lightness, very difficult to describe, that stamps the skull of a wild turkey, and at once distinguishes it from any typical skull of a tame one.