The sport of shooting pheasants is very English, and few people think that the pheasant is a foreign bird, introduced into England, just as in fact the turkey, which seems to belong especially to the English Christmas, came to us from America. The _pheasant_ gets its name from the river Phasis, in the Eastern country of Pontus. It may seem peculiar that a bird coming from America should be called a _turkey_; but we saw in an earlier chapter how vague the people of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were about America. When Columbus reached the shore of that continent, people thought he had sailed round by another way to the "Indies." In nearly all European countries the turkey got names which show that most people thought it came from India, or at least from some part of the "Indies." Even in England it was called for a time "cok off Inde." In Italy it was _gallina d'India_ (or "Indian hen"). The modern French words for male and female turkeys come from this mistake. In French the bird was at first known as _pouille d'Inde_ (or "Indian fowl"). The name came to be shortened into the one word _dinde_, and then, as people thought this must mean the female turkey, they made a new word for the male, _dindon_. But though so many words come from the names of places, and some of these would not seem to do so at first sight, there are other words which seem to come from place-names which do not do so at all. _Brazil_ wood is found in large quantities in Brazil, but the wood is not called after the country. On the contrary, the country is called after the wood. This kind of wood was already used in Europe in the twelfth century, and its name is found in several European languages. When the Portuguese adventurers found such large quantities in this part of South America they gave it the name of _Brazil_ from the wood. The island of _Madeira_ got its name in the same way, this being the word for "timber," from the Latin word _materia_. Again, guinea-pigs do not come from Guinea, on the west coast of Africa, though guinea-fowls do so. Guinea-pigs really come from Brazil. The name _guinea-pig_ was given to these little animals because, when the sailors brought them home, people thought they had come from Africa. But in the seventeenth century a common voyage for ships was to sail from English or other European ports to the west coast of Africa, where bands of poor negroes were seized or bought, and carried over the Atlantic to be sold as slaves in the American "plantations." The ships naturally did not come home empty, but often people were not very clear as to whether the articles they brought back came from Africa or America. Again, _India ink_ comes, not from India, but from China. _Indian corn_ comes from America. _Sedan chairs_ had nothing to do with Sedan in France, but probably take their name from the Latin verb _sedere_, "to sit."