English turkeys are smaller than either wild form. They have not varied in any great degree; but there are some breeds which can be distinguished--as Norfolks, Suffolks, Whites, and Copper-coloured (or Cambridge), all of which, if precluded from crossing with other breeds, propagate their kind truly. Of these kinds, the most distinct is the small, hardy, dull-black Norfolk turkey, of which the chickens are black, with occasionally white patches about the head. The other breeds scarcely differ except in colour, and their chickens are generally mottled all over with brownish-grey.[473] The tuft of hair on the breast, which is proper to the male alone, occasionally appears on the breast of the domesticated female.[474] The inferior tail-coverts vary in number, and according to a German superstition the hen lays as many eggs as the cock has feathers of this kind.[475] In Holland there was formerly, according to Temminck, a beautiful buff-yellow breed, furnished with an ample white topknot. Mr. Wilmot has described[476] a white turkey-cock with a crest formed of "feathers about four inches long, with bare quills, and a tuft of soft white down growing at the end." Many of the young birds whilst young inherited this kind of crest, but afterwards it either fell off or was pecked out by the other birds. This is an interesting case, as with care a new breed might probably have been formed; and a topknot of this nature would have been to a certain extent analogous to that borne by the males in several allied genera, such as Euplocomus, Lophophorus, and Pavo. Wild turkeys, believed in every instance to have been imported from the United States, have been kept in the parks of Lords Powis, Leicester, Hill, and Derby. The Rev. W. D. Fox procured birds from the two first-named parks, and he informs me that they certainly differed a little from each other in the shape of their bodies and in the barred plumage on their wings. These birds likewise differed from Lord Hill's stock. Some of the latter kept at Oulton by Sir P. Egerton, though precluded from {294} crossing with common turkeys, occasionally produced much paler-coloured birds, and one that was almost white, but not an albino. These half-wild turkeys in thus slightly differing from each other present an analogous case with the wild cattle kept in the several British parks. We must suppose that the differences have resulted from the prevention of free intercrossing between birds ranging over a wide area, and from the changed conditions to which they have been exposed in England. In India the climate has apparently wrought a still greater change in the turkey, for it is described by Mr. Blyth[477] as being much degenerated in size, "utterly incapable of rising on the wing," of a black colour, and "with the long pendulous appendages over the beak enormously developed." THE GUINEA FOWL.