354 WEB-FOOTED BIRDS. 



exhibited by the Canada Goose while in a state of domes- 

 tication, and though at all other times reconciled to accus- 

 tomed and voluntary captivity, they are often heard in- 

 stinctively to hail the passing flocks as they pursue their 

 yielding way high in the air. Individuals have been known 

 to leave the premises where they appeared entirely domestic, 

 after the healinor of the wounds which brought them into 

 captivity, and they have thus successfully mounted into the 

 air, and joined some passing party pursuing their way to 

 the north. 



A Mr. Piatt of Long Island, having wounded a female 

 Wild Goose, succeeded in taming it, and left it at large 

 with his other common Geese. Its wound healed, and it soon 

 became familiar and reconciled to its domestic condition, but 

 in the following spring it joined a party of Canada Geese and 

 disappeared until autumn ; when, at length, out of a passing 

 flock, Mr. P. observed three Geese to detach themselves from 

 their companions, and, after wheeling round several times, 

 alight in the barn yard, when to his astonishment he recog- 

 nized, in one of the three his long lost fugitive, who had 

 now returned, accompanied by her offspring, to share the hos- 

 pitality of her former acquaintance. However incredible 

 this story may appear, I have heard two or three relations 

 of the same kind, as well authenticated as any other facts 

 in natural history. One of these happened to a planter near 

 Okrocock inlet, in North Carolina, in which, as in the 

 present instance, the female, after being absent the sum- 

 mer, returned recruited with her brood in autumn ; but 

 the greedy farmer, less humane than Mr. Piatt, having 

 probably heard of the old adage, that " a bird in the hand 

 was worth two in the bush," made sure of his prizes by 

 killing them without delay. It appears from the relations 

 of travellers, and particularly a Dr. Sanchez, that in the 

 Cossack villages on the Don, (in the autumn of 1736) he 



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