BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



in other portions of the Eastern Counties.* Sir Thomas 

 Browne throws no light on this point, this class of 

 wild fowl being dismissed by him with the bare 

 enumeration of "wild geese, Anser ferus, Scotch goose 

 Anser scoticus," the former probably including all the 

 grey species, and the latter the black or bernicles. 

 There seems, however, no question that the following 

 account of its habits in this country, as given by 

 Pennant in 1776, applied as much to Norfolk as to 

 Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, more particularly as 

 no one county is specially referred to. "This species 

 resides in the fens the whole year ; breeds there, and 

 hatches about eight or nine young, which are often 

 taken, easily made tame, and esteemed most excellent 

 meat, superior to the domestic goose. The old geese 

 which are shot, are plucked and sold in the market, as 

 fine tame ones, and are readily bought, the purchaser 

 being deceived by the size, but their flesh is coarse. 

 Towards winter they collect in flocks, hut in all seasons 

 live and feed in the fens." Taking it then for granted 

 that the grey goose, as well as the bustard, was an 

 indigenous species in Norfolk, the question next arises 

 as to the date when it ceased to inhabit our fens. That 



ever, for 1870 (p. 301), the word "lag," acknowledged by the 

 editor to be " a puzzle to most people," is thus rendered on the 

 authority of Mr. Skeat : — " Lag," late, last, or slow, whence " lag- 

 gard " and " laglast," a loiterer ; " lag-man," the last man ; " lag- 

 teeth," the posterior molar or wisdom teeth, (as the last to make 

 their appearance) ; and " lag-clock," a clock that is behind time. 

 *' Accordingly the grey lag goose is the grey goose, which in former 

 days lagged behind the others to breed in our fens, as it now does 

 on the Sutherland lochs, when its congeners had betaken them- 

 Belves to their more northern summer quarters." 



* The best informed modern ornithologists believe that the 

 grey lag is the only species of wild goose which breeds in 

 Scotland." 



