Ancestry of the Goose 43 
primary and secondary wing-feathers, 
they become, like the ducks, perfectly 
helpless. Knowing this, they duly re- 
tire to still safer strongholds, where 
they pass this dangerous but not very 
prolonged period of their life. 
“When the young geese have grown 
their flight-feathers and the old birds 
are fully fledged, they begin to fly out 
to the fields to feed, sometimes in 
separate broods, at other times in 
parties; and it sometimes happens that 
their feeding grounds are far removed 
from their places of refuge. We 
owe to Vavilov the following lifelike 
description of these foraging expedi- 
tions: ‘A little later the separate broods 
combine to form flocks; and from this 
moment the geese no longer fall such 
an easy prey to the fowler. Such 
gaggles feed in the corn-fields, especially 
buchwheat, peas and oats. Having 
once selected a field, they constantly 
fly to it, even continuing to visit it after 
the harvest to glean the scattered grain. 
At this period the geese live a life of ease 
and luxury. With sundown they fly to 
the field, crowding the crops to an 
incredible extent, and at the call of the 
old birds rising heavily and making for 
the lonely lake to pass the night. They 
always fly by the same route, and as 
soon as they reach water at once 
descend and devote their first attention 
to slaking their thirst, and then swim 
to the selected open shore, where they 
get out, lie down, and fall asleep. The 
old birds alone do not sleep, but divide 
the watches, and, if they hear anything 
suspicious, at once wake the. whole 
flock with a loud cry of warning, and 
in-an instant fly up into the air. 
After a doze of an hour or two, long 
before dawn the geese on guard wake 
their sleeping companions, and again 
the whole flock flies off to the favorite 
field, where it remains until early 
morning. Having taken their fill, the 
geese now fly to another lake, where 
they pass the day. In the evening 
they again fly to the field, and so on 
until their departure.’ ”’ 
In winter the goose is languid and 
inactive, passing whole days in dense 
growths of reeds, surrounded by quag- 
mires, and inaccessible alike for man 
and beast. 
Wild specimens weigh from 6 to 12 
pounds; specimens as large as 161% 
pounds have been reported, however. 
The individual variation in the coloring 
of the plumage and of the naked parts 
of the bird is subject to innumerable 
changes, as with all species of geese. 
EARLY DOMESTICATION 
The very abundance of the bird in a 
wild state must have tended to delay 
the time of domestication, for, as Hehn 
points out, “Where it was abundant 
and easy to obtain, there was no 
necessity for breeding it artificially in 
confinement; and so long as men’s 
manner of life was unsettled, a bird 
that takes thirty days to hatch, and a 
proportionate length of time to rear its 
young, was unsuitable to the economy of 
a pastoral people.”’ 
This explains, perhaps, why we find 
its remains lacking in the Swiss lake 
dwellings, whose period is probably 
2000-4000 B. C. When we come to the 
classical period, however, we find it well 
established. 
“By the Greeks the goose was 
considered a graceful bird, admired 
for its beauty, and an elegant present 
for favored friends. In the Odyssey, 
Penelope has a little flock of twenty 
geese, in which she takes much pleasure, 
as we learn from the beautiful passage 
in which she relates her dream to her 
disguised husband. Here the geese 
appear as domestic animals, kept more 
for the pleasure the sight of them affords 
than for any profit they might bring. 
So, in the Edda, Gudrun keeps geese, 
which scream when their mistress la- 
ments over the corpse of Sigurd. At 
the same time, the Greeks valued geese 
as careful guardians of the house; on 
the grave of a good housewife was 
placed the figure of a goose as a tender 
tribute to her quality of—vigilance! 
‘““Among the Romans perfectly white 
geese’ were carefully selected and used 
4 There appears to be in the lag goose and its descendants a strong tendency to the production 
of white mutants. 
a white variety of the breed has been created. 
The same seems to be true of the Chinese species, judging from the fact that 
