EGYPTIAN GOOSE. 41 



partly scientific and partly gastronomic, of tasting every 

 variety of bird that came in his way, and not aware at 

 the time of its real value, he bought and ate this goose 

 as one he had never before tasted, and was not a little 

 chagrined afterwards to find that he had sacrificed so 

 great a rarity. Mr. Wigg, moreover, though a talented 

 botanist was not a collector of ornithological specimens. 

 Mr. Gurney some years afterwards received from the 

 late Mr. Sparshall a box containing some of the smaller 

 feathers of this specimen, which were collected so soon 

 as its specific value was suspected from Mr. Wigg's 

 description of it. In farther confirmation of this story 

 — as showing the probability, notwithstanding the ex- 

 treme rarity of the bird, of its having occurred in 

 Norfolk — is the fact of a remarkably fine example having 

 been killed out of a flock of brent geese, at Maldon, in 

 Essex, January 6th, 1871, as recorded in the "Zoolo- 

 gist " for that year (p. 2513) by Mr. J. E. Harting, in 

 whose collection I have seen it, and who gives a list of 

 the recorded occurrences of this bird, in Great Britain, 

 from 1776 to the present time. 



ANSER .aSGYPTIACUS (Lmnseus.) 

 EGYPTIAN GOOSE. 



Both the Egyptian and the Canada goose were in- 

 cluded by Messrs. Gurney and Fisher in their " Account 

 of birds found in Norfolk," but though, as stated by 

 those authors, it is probable, as regards the former, 

 that such as " occur on our coast after high easterly 

 winds are genuine wild examples,""^ yet the transatlantic 



* Mr. J. H. Gurney has a stuffed specimen of the Egyptian 

 goose, shot at Yarmouth during a very strong east wind, which he 

 is inchned to think may have been a genuine wild one ; and Mr. 

 Q 



