[18] Bartram, William. Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogalges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Choctaws. Containing an account of the soil and Natural Productions of those regions; together with the observations on the manners of the Indians. Embellished with Copper Plates.
The original edition of Bartram is cited in the Third Instalment of American Ornithological Bibliography by Elliott Coues (the references being pp. 83 and 290 bis). Bull. U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Surv. Terr. 1879, p. 810, Govm't Printing Office. It is here in this work of his that Bartram designates the domestic turkey as Meleagris gallopavo, Linn.; and the wild turkey of this country (M. occidentalis) (p. 83) as M. americanus (p. 290 bis).
[19] Barton, P. S. The Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal, Vol. II, 1806, pp. 162-164. Coues, in his Ornitho. Biblio., cited above, omits the words, "The Philadelphia," which gives trouble to find the work in a library; he also has the year wrong, giving 1805 for 1806—the latter being correct. The copy I consulted had no Pl. 1, with the article, that I happened to see.
[20] Clinton, De Witt. Trans. Lit. and Philos. Soc., New York, 1, 1815, pp. 21-184. Note S. pp. 125-128.
[21] Owen, R. P. Z. S., V. 1837, pp. 34, 35.
[22] Le Conte, John. Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Phila. IX, 1857, pp. 179-181. The distinctive characters and the habits, as given by this author of the wild and domesticated turkeys of the United States, are doubtless of some value; but the deductions he draws from the comparisons made are, as we know, quite erroneous. I have not examined the article by E. Roger in the Bull. Soc. Acclim. cited by Coues in his Ornitho. Biblio. as having appeared in the "2c Ser. VII, 1870, pp. 264-266." Either the year or the pagination, or both, of the citation is wrong, and as many of the copies were out at the time of my search, and the others distributed through several libraries, I failed to obtain it. R. W. S.
[23] Gould, J. 2. On a new turkey, Meleagris Mexicana. P. Z. S. XXIV, 1856, pp. 61-63. (In his Ornithol. Bibliogr.) Coues remarks upon this as follows: "Subsequently determined to be the stock whence the domestic bird descended, and hence a synonym of M. gallopavo, Linn."
This paper was extensively republished at the time, generally under the title of "A new species of turkey from Mexico" [all citing the P. Z. S. article]. One journal quoted it as follows: "Mr. Gould exhibited a specimen of turkey which he had obtained in Mexico, and which differed materially from the wild turkey of the United States. At the same time this turkey so closely resembled the domesticated turkey of Europe that he believed naturalists were wrong in attributing its origin to the United States species. The present specimen was therefore a new species, and he proposed to call it Meleagris Mexicana, which, if his theory was correct, must henceforth be the designation of the common turkey." Amer. Jour. Sci. XXII, 1856, p. 139. Under the same title this latter was reprinted in Edinb. New Philos. Journ. n. s., iv, 1856, pp. 371, 372. See also Bryant, H. "Remarks on the supposed new species of turkey, Meleagris Mexicana, recently described by Mr. Gould." Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. vi, 1857, pp. 158, 159. "In the Proceedings of the Zoölogical Society of London for 1856, page 61," says Professor Baird, "Mr. Gould characterizes as new a wild turkey from the mines of Real del Norte, in Mexico, under the name of Meleagris Mexicana, and is the first to suggest that it is derived from the domesticated bird, and not from the common wild turkey of eastern North America, on which he retains the name of M. gallopavo, of Linnæus. He stated that the peculiarities of the new species consist chiefly in the creamy white tips of the tail feathers and of the upper tail coverts, with some other points of minor importance. I suggest that the wild turkey of New Mexico, as referred to by various writers, belongs to this new species, and not to the M. gallopavo." (loc. cit. p. 289.) Compare the above with what Professor Baird states in the series of the Pacif. Railroad Reports, vol. ix, p. 618, with the remainder of the above quoted article, which is too long to reproduce here.
[24] Bennett, E. T. "Publ. with the sanction of the council under the superintendence of the Secretary and Vice Secretary of the Society. Birds. Vol. II. London, 1835, pp. 209-224." There is a very excellent wood-cut of a turkey illustrating this article (left lateral view), of which the author says: "Our own figure is taken from a young male, in imperfect plumage, brought from America by Mr. Audubon. Another specimen, in very brilliant plumage, but perhaps not purely wild, forms a part of the Society's Museum" (p. 223). Bennett derived most of his information about the habits of the wild turkey in nature "from an excellent memoir by M. Charles Lucien Bonaparte, in his continuation of Wilson's American Ornithology."
"In that work M. Bonaparte claims credit for having given the first representation of the wild turkey;* and justly so, for the figures introduced into a landscape in the account of De Laudonniere's Voyage to Florida in De Bry's Collection, and that published by Bricknell in his Natural History of North Carolina, cannot with certainty be referred to the native bird. They are besides too imperfect to be considered as characteristic representations of the species. Much about the same time with M. Bonaparte's figure appeared another, in M. Viellot's Galerie des Oiseaux, taken from a specimen in the Paris Museum.