298 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Sept. 



considerable distance from the land, the dog is sent into the water, 

 but as the birds approach nearer and nearer the dog is allowed to 

 show himself less and less : in this manner tliey are easily toled 

 within gunshot. "When the sportsman has no dog with him he 

 has to act the part of one by crawling in and out of the long grass 

 on his hands and knees, and sometimes this haa to be repeated 

 continuously for nearly an hour, making it rather a laborious 

 undertaking, but I have frequently known this device succeed 

 when others have failed. The stuffed skin ofa yellow fox (^Vidpes 

 fulvus) is sometimes used for toling geese, and answers the 

 purpose remarkably well, especially when the geese are near the 

 shore, by tying it to a long stick and imitating the motions of a 

 dog retrieving the glove or stick. Foxes have frequently been 

 observed to practice the same device in a state of nature, and the 

 settlers who prize fur more than feathers commence toling poor 

 Reynard within range of the fatal shot, which, strange to say, 

 considering the general craftiness of the animal, is very easily 

 done. The Canada goose may often be toled from a long distance 

 when on wing, by " cronking" or imitating its cry. When these 

 geese fly, either in pairs or in flocks, a gander invariably leads : 

 this fact is so well known to the settlers that when firing at a pair 

 of geese they invariably shoot at the hinder bird, not only because 

 the goose is the fattest (in the spring), but because the gander 

 will generally fly round and round its dead mate for some little 

 time : such affection but too often proves fatal, especially when 

 the shooter has the use of two barrels, but such is not generally 

 the case among the settlers, who chiefly use the old-fashioned long 

 duck guns, single barrelled, of ten or twelve bore. Ice-gazes and 

 false geese are also employed on the ice for killing these beautiful 

 birds in the spring of the year. Like the domestic goose, which 

 has been known to live upwards of a hundred years, these birds 

 are supposed by the settlers to live to a great age. A few years ago 

 a specimen of the Canada goose was shot at Grrasswater Bay, on 

 the Labrador, which had a thin brass collar on its leg initialed and 

 dated just thirty years previous to its capture. This species does 

 not commence laying until three years old, and from examining 

 the ovaries of several evidently young females I found them to 

 contain from 180 to 190 eggs, which, averaging six per annum, 

 would limit the laying period to some thirty or thirty-one years; 

 so that, bar accidents, the birds would not probably live more 

 than forty or forty=five years. 



