[1533] “On lit, dans l’Année Littéraire, que Boileau, encore enfant, jouant dans une cour, tomba. Dans sa chute, sa jaquette se retrousse; un dindon lui donne plusieurs coups de bec sur une partie très-délicate. Boileau en fut toute sa vie incommodé; et de-là, peut-être, cette sévérité de mœurs, ... sa satyre contre les femmes..... Peut-être son antipathie contre les dindons occasionna-t-elle l’aversion secrette qu’il eut toujours pour les Jésuites, qui les ont apportés en France.”—Helvetius de l’Esprit. Amst. 1759, 12mo. i. p. 288.
[1534] De Re Rustica. Spiræ Nemet. 1595, 8vo, lib. iv. p. 640.
[1535] Hausbuch, vol. iv. Wittenberg, 1611, 4to, p. 499.
[1536] Œkonomische Nachrichten der Schlesischen Gesellschaft, 1773, p. 306. For the festival of the university of Wittenberg, in 1602, fifteen Indian or Turkey fowls were purchased at the rate of a florin each. They were in part dressed with lemon-sauce.
[1537] Bell’s Travels, i. p. 128.
[1538] “Turkeys (poulets d’Inde) are there foreign and scarce birds. The Armenians, about thirty years ago, carried from Constantinople to Ispahan a great number of them, which they presented to the king as a rarity; but it is said that the Persians, not knowing the method of breeding them, gave in return the care of them to these people, and assigned a different house for each. The Armenians, however, finding them troublesome and expensive, suffered them almost all to perish. I saw some which were reared in the territory of Ispahan, four leagues from the city, by the Armenian peasants; but they were not numerous. Some imagine that these birds were brought from the East Indies; but this is so far from being the case, that there are none of them in that part of the world. They must have come from the West Indies, although they are called cocqs d’Inde because, being larger than common fowls, they in that resemble the Indian fowls, which are of much greater size than the common fowls of other countries.”—Voyages de Chardin, iv. p. 84.
[1539] Hakluyt, ii. p. 825.
[1540] Rélation Universelle d’Afrique. Lyon 1688, iv. p. 426.
[1541] Perroniana, p. 67.
[1542] Leland’s Itinerary. Oxford, 1744, vol. vi. p. 5.