The male and female differ conspicuously in so many points that the sex of an adult bird is distinguished without difficulty. As a rule the males are much larger than the females of the same stock. In colored varieties the males are more strongly pigmented, and the shades of color in them are more pronounced. The head characters of the male are much more prominent in size and more brilliant in color. Both sexes have the power of inflating the loose appendages of the head and neck. In the male this is highly developed; in the female only perceptible. The male has a brushlike tuft of coarse hair growing from the upper part of the breast. This tuft, called the beard, is black in all varieties. The female is usually shy and has a low, plaintive call. The male challenges attention and often struts about with his tail elevated and spread in a circle like a fan, wings trailing on the ground, the feathers all over the body erected until he looks twice his natural size, and at frequent intervals vociferously uttering his peculiar "gobble-gobble-gobble." The male turkey has short spurs like those of the male fowl. The name _turkey_ was erroneously given in England when the birds were first known there and it was supposed that they came from Turkey. The adult male is called a _turkey cock_, also a _tom-turkey_ (sometimes simply _tom_) and a _gobbler_. The adult female is called a _turkey hen_, or a _hen turkey_, the order of the terms being immaterial. Young turkeys before the sex can be distinguished are variously called _young turkeys_, _turkey chicks_, and _poults_, the latter being considered by poultrymen the proper technical name. After the sex can be distinguished, the terms _cockerel_ and _pullet_ are applied to turkeys in the same way as to fowls. =Origin.= The turkey is a native of North America. Although not as widely distributed as before the country was settled, it is still found wild in many places. It was domesticated in Mexico and Central America long before the discovery of the New World. Domesticated stock from these places was taken to Spain and England early in the sixteenth century, and was soon spread all over Europe. The domestic stock of the colonists in the United States and Canada came from Europe with the other kinds of domestic poultry. It is probable that from early colonial times the domestic stock was occasionally crossed by wild stock, but we have no information about such crosses until after the Revolutionary War. From the earliest published statements in regard to the matter it would appear that such crosses had long been common, and that the benefits of vigorous wild blood were appreciated by the farmers of that time. The wild turkey is about as large as a medium-sized domestic turkey but, being very close-feathered, looks smaller. It is nearly black, and the bare head and neck are darker in color than in most domestic birds. [Illustration: Fig. 154. Common turkeys on a New England farm]