Charles Hallock, the able editor of “Forest and Stream,” author of “Camp Life,” “Sportsman’s Gazetteer,” etc., states that in the spring wild turkeys “pair off” (like blue-birds), “and after the young are hatched both parents take great interest in the growth and progress of the young family;” that they are “easily tamed; are slaughtered by moonlight while roosting; that it is rarely a wing-shot can be procured; that they are killed by sportsmen in various ways,” most of which is not much less at variance with facts in nature than the statement of Mr. Burrell Symmes, who claimed that he had outwitted the sagacity of the bird, and killed at one shot, with a rifle, a large flock that infested a wheat-stack near their range. “The turkeys would gather around the stack, every few days, as close as they could crowd their bodies, pulling out wheat-heads to eat;” and, taking in the situation, says he bent the barrel of his gun to the segment of a circle corresponding to the diameter of the area of the base of the stack. And well loaded with powder and leaden ball, concealed the weapon at the proper adjustment, placing himself in view of the situation, with a cord attached to the trigger. The turkeys came, and unsuspectingly crowded around the stack, and began their accustomed repast. Now was the moment for action--“the cord was pulled, and the gun fired, which sent the ball round and round the stack, until it mowed down every last turkey in the flock.” Respecting the habits and peculiarities of the wild turkey, the author turned up a slip from the lips of an old North Carolina negro, who gives the best pen-picture of the home-life of the bird that has fallen to the notice of ornithologists. The authography is somewhat objectionable, but the whole story is well told. Among other things he says the wild turkey is a “mighty peert fowl;” that he can sometimes teach a fox how to be smart, while at other times a sucking calf is not half so big a fool as he makes of himself; that he had known gobblers to outwit all the hunters in the country, and then walk into some ordinary colored man’s “pen” and stay there, “a cranin he neck, an’ tryen to get out at de top w’at been all roof over, wile de hole in de groun’ w’at he came in at stans wide open.” The “pen” was a fatal device, capturing annually thousands of those birds during early settlements. Before the extensive forests disappeared turkeys lived well in the fall and winter and fattened on the mast. But owing to the love for Indian corn they were by a moderate display of this food easily enticed into traps, called “pens,” when placed in secluded sections of forest where the birds were known to seek subsistence.