iated
with the Puritan festival of Thanksgiving, an institution which has
spread throughout the United States and which has in a way taken the
place of the harvest-home festivities of the Old World and bygone ages.
It is probable that the relation of this bird to our national
festivities has done much to keep it in use in this country. It is a
well-recognized fact that it is costly to keep and that the eggs are not
desirable for culinary use. The species requires a wide range. It does
not do well in the confined conditions in which cocks and hens can
readily be maintained. It therefore is not likely to be kept in any
region where the agriculture is of a high grade. It is best suited to
farms where there are considerable areas of half-wild pastures.

Although the turkey is a truly gregarious form, its mental endowments
are of a lower grade than those of most social birds. Their calls are
few in number and have little of that conversational quality which we
note in those of our ordinary barnyard fowls. Although the males contest
the field with each other by personal combats, they are not very
valiant, the creatures trusting for favor with the females rather to the
parade of their plumage and the pomp of their carriage than to the wager
of battle. In the matter of show they are, however, very effective,
being surpassed only by the peacock in the splendor of their attire. In
their domesticated state they lose much of the beauty which they have in
the wilderness, as they do their pristine dimensions. Those who have
hunted our wild species are likely to remember scenes where in some
forest glade they have beheld a gobbler displaying his graces to an
admiring harem. As he struts about with his tail feathers erect and his
neck arched back, now and then pausing to utter an exultant gobble, the
spectacle is one of the most amusing displays of animal pride which the
naturalist has a chance to behold.

[Illustration: The Largest of all Poultry--The Ostrich]

Recent experiments in ostrich farming seem to indicate that we are on
the eve of introducing into our "happy family" the noblest remaining
member of that group of great birds which characterized the life of
the later geological periods. As yet the efforts in taming ostriches
are too new for us to tell just what the effect of man's skill on the
development of this creature will be. It is evident, however, that the
creature can be won from its wilderness state, at least to some