bush, sometimes
in a hollow log, and there lays from twelve to twenty eggs, which are
somewhat smaller and more elongated than the tame turkey's, but of the
same color: dull cream, sprinkled with reddish dots.

I have often hunted for stolen turkey nests, and hunted in vain, because
the cautious mother had covered her eggs when leaving them. This is one
of the wild habits that has persisted. The wild hen, as the hatching
approaches, will not trust even this precaution, however, but remains
without food and drink upon the nest until the chicks can be led off.
She can scarcely be driven from the nest, often allowing herself to be
captured first.

Mother-love burns fierce in her. Such helpless things are her chicks!
She hears them peeping in the shell and breaks it to help them out. She
preens and dries them and keeps them close under her for days.

Not for a week after they are hatched does she allow them out in a rain.
If, after that, they get a cold wetting, the wild mother, it is said,
will feed the buds of the spice-bush to her brood, as our grandmothers
used to administer mint tea to us.

The tame hen does seem to have lost something of this wild-mother skill,
doubtless because for many generations she has been entirely freed of
the larger part of the responsibility.

I never knew a tame mother turkey to doctor her infants for vermin. But
the wild hen will. The woods are full of ticks and detestable vermin as
deadly as cold rains. When her brood begins to lag and pine, the wild
mother knows, and leading them to some old ant-hill, she gives them a
sousing dust-bath. The vermin hate the odor of the ant-scented dust, and
after a series of these baths disappear.

This is wise; and if this report be true, then the wild turkey is as
wise and far-seeing a mother as the woods contain. One observer even
tells of three hens that stole off together and fixed up a nest between
themselves. Each put in her eggs--forty-two in all--and each took turns
guarding, so that the nest was never left alone.

What special enemy caused this unique partnership the naturalist does
not say. The three mothers built together, brooded together, and
together guarded the nest. But how did those three mothers divide the
babies?

I said I wanted you to visit a farm where there are turkeys. And you
will have to if you would see the turkey at home. For, though I have
traveled through the South, and been in the swamps and river "bottoms"
there a