The difficulty experienced in establishing a cross between our wild and tame birds, shows that they are not as closely related as was once supposed. Did a near kinship subsist, interbreeding could most readily be accomplished. With the Mexican Turkey, matters are otherwise. That a relationship does obtain between the domestic bird and the latter--its wild original--there can be no question, as specimens of the naturalized species are often met with which are nearly the counterpart of its Mexican progenitor, differing only in the greater development of the fatty appendages of the head and neck, differences which may be accounted for as the effects of the influences to which the birds have been subjected by man. No well-authenticated instances of similar reversions to our once familiar Eastern bird have been known to occur, which would necessarily have been the case had they been so closely related as was once maintained. _Meleagris Mexicana_ affects sparsely-overgrown savannas, and occupies in Mexico the region of the oaks and the coast--the _tierra caliente_ of geographers. It is a very wary bird, and lives in families. Insects of divers kinds, but chiefly of a coleopterous character, as well as the seeds of grasses, constitute its bill of fare. When searching for food, especially in perilous localities, a sentinel is stationed on the outskirts of the flock, whose duty it is to announce the presence of danger. Flight is seldom resorted to at such times, for these birds, being fleeter of foot than the swiftest dog, are able to escape their enemies by running. Toward the close of March, or in the beginning of April, the hens separate from the males, and seek for themselves nesting-places in secluded localities. The nest is anything but an elaborate affair, consisting of a few dry leaves or grasses scratched into a depression by the side of a prostrate log. Here the eggs--twelve beautiful, oval, speckled treasures--are laid, and for thirty long, weary days and nights they are sat upon by their author in her efforts to warm them into life. When she leaves them, which she does a short time each day for food, she always takes the necessary precaution to cover them with leaves, as a protection against cold and intrusion. Nothing will tempt her to quit the nest when the young are about to be hatched. So absorbed does she then become that she has been known to submit to capture rather than endanger the lives of her offspring.