The Philosophy of Despair

orers, who landed in those parts where wild turkeys are to be found, there has been no cessation of verbal narratives, casual notices, and appearance of elegant literature relating to the mem

st be added the fact that wild turkeys are magnificent game birds; the hunting of them peculiarly attractive to t

n the Scandinavian languages as well as in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and doubtless in others of the Old World. Some of these accounts appeared as long ago as the early part of the sixteenth century, or perhaps even earlier; for it is known that Grijalva discovered Mexico in 1518, an

scribe the material representing our extinct turkeys handed us by the paleontologists, or the fossilized remains of the prehistoric ancestors of the family, of which we have at hand a few fragments of the greatest value. These I shall refer to but briefly for several reasons. In the first place, their technical descriptions have already appea

ct, now found to be but a synonym of the Meleagris superba of Cope from the Pleistocene of New Jersey. At the present writing I have before me the type specimen of Meleagris al

fic name of altus, it would appear that I did not fully concur in the propriety of doing so, as will be seen from a paper I publis

en described by Professor Marsh and generally recognized. These are Meleagris antiqua in 1871, and Meleagris celer in 1

at

ntiqua; M.

erior aspect of the proximal moiety of the left tarso-metatarsus of Meleagris celer of Marsh. Fig. 4. Posterior aspect of the same fragment of bone shown in Fig. 3. Fig. 5.

leistocene of New Jersey is said to be represented by the bones enumerated in a foregoing footnote. In this connection let it be borne in mind that, while I found fossil specimens of Meleagris g. sil

of the Peabody Museum of Natural History of Yale University, wrote me on the subject (May 2, 1912), and with marked courtesy granted the request made of him by Dr. Eaton, and forwarded me the type specimen of Marsh of M. antiqua and M. celer by registered mail. They were received on the 3rd of May, 1912, and I made negatives of the two specimens on the same day. It affords me pleasure to thank both Professor Schuchert and Dr. Eaton here for the unusual privilege I enjoyed, through their assistance, in the loan of these specimens;[5] also Dr. James E. Bene

sed "Meleagris antiquus" was not taken in Oregon, but in Colorado.[6] Both of these fossils I have very critically compared with the corresponding parts of the bones

o fragmentary to pronounce, with anything like certainty, that it ever belonged to a turkey at all. In the first place, it is a very imperfect fragment (Plate 1, Figs. 1 and 2); in the second, it does not typically present the "characteristic portions" of that end of the humerus in a turkey, as Profes

aceous fowl the size of an adult existing Meleagris-and long ago extinc

nding far down the shaft of the bone, it being continued from the internal, thickened border of the hypotarsus. This ridge is only indicated on the fossil bone, having either been broken off or never existed at all. In any event it is not present in the specimen. The general facies of the fossil is quite different from that part of the tarso-metatarsus in an existing wild turkey, and to me it does not seem to have come from the skeleton of the pelvic limb of a meleagrine fowl at all. It may have belonged to a bird of the galline group, not essentially a turkey; wh

sor Marsh had no such material to guide him when he pronounced upon his fossil turkeys. Had I made new species, based on the fragm

ds upon the distal ends of long bones, and surely no assistance whatever to those who honestly e