THE RESTORATION OF WILD FOWL 119 



the whole sport to my mind, is the greatest difficulty 

 connected with it. Apart from the raids of rats and 

 skunks upon the young birds, the reasons for this are 

 two — the apparent weakening of the 'life force' in Sha- 

 vian terms in the birds born in captivity, so that mating 

 is the exception rather than the rule among them, pos- 

 sibly because the field of natural selection is limited to 

 the few rather than the many, and the fact that both 

 goose and gander, once mated, are faithful in bereave- 

 ment forever after.f This is doubtless highly creditable 

 to the birds, though it has been suggested that this was 

 the true reason of their being called geese, but it is equal- 

 ly inconvenient to their owners."* 



*"In the Woods and on the Shore." By Richard H. Ware. 

 t See statement of Warren It. Leach, contra, in the chapter on Wild 

 Geese. 



