GEESE 203 



domestic birds of meaner spirits do, but boldly 

 advances to meet and challenge you. How keen 

 his senses are, how undimmed by ages of captivity 

 the ancient instinct of watchfulness is in him, every 

 one must know who has slept in lonely country 

 houses. At some late hour of the night the sleeper 

 was suddenly awakened by the loud screaming of 

 the geese ; they had discovered the approach of 

 some secret prowler, a fox perhaps, or a thievish 

 tramp or gipsy, before a dog barked. In many a 

 lonely farmhouse throughout the land you will be 

 told that the goose is the better watch-dog. 



When we consider this bird purely from the 

 aesthetic point if view — and here I am speaking of 

 geese generally, all of the thirty species of the sub- 

 family Anserinse, distributed over the cold and 

 temperate regions of the globe — we find that several 

 of them possess a rich and beautiful colouring, and, 

 if not so proud, often a more graceful carriage than 

 our domestic bird, or its original, the wild grey- 

 lag goose. To know these birds is to greatly admire 

 them, and we may now add that this admiration 

 is no new thing on the earth. It is the belief 

 of distinguished Egyptologists that a fragmentary 

 fresco, discovered at Medum, dates back to a time 

 at least four thousand years before the Christian 



