ANSER FERUS. D03 
Mr, James Wilson (author of ‘Illustrations of Zoology’ and various other 
works), and Mr. Selby, the last of whom communicated the well-known paper 
“On the Quadrupeds and Birds inhabiting the County of Sutherland ” to the 
‘Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal’ (xx. pp. 156-161, 286-295), extracts 
from which have been repeatedly reprinted. They were “agreeably 
surprised ” to find a species of Wild Goose breeding in the district, but 
observed one or more pairs on Lochs Shin, Naver, and Laighal, in two instances 
accompanied by their young, one of which they caught. They may perhaps 
be pardoned for attributing the specimen to the Bean-Goose, as that in their 
experience was by far the commonest species in Britain, and was naturally 
supposed to be that which they observed. Moreover, at that time and for 
some years after there was very little known with any certainty as to the 
breeding-quarters of the different species of Wild Geese. The Grey Lag had 
for a long while ceased to breed in the English fen-country, and nobody 
suspected it would be found breeding in Scotland till a nest was obtained 
in the island of Lewis by the Messrs. Milner in 1847 (§ 5394), but it was the 
next year identified in Sutherland itself by Messrs. St. John and William 
Dunbar (§ 5395), the latter of whom, however, still imagined, as did the 
Messrs. Milner, that the Bean-Goose bred also in that county. But 
Mr. St. John would appear to have satisfied himself in 1849, when accom- 
panied by Mr, Hancock (Cat. B. Northumb. & Durham, p. 147), that the 
supposed Bean-Goose was really the Grey Lag. 
The following notes will shew the amount of trouble Mr. Wolley took 
to clear up the unhappy mistake of the Jardine and Selby party in 1834, and 
bear witness to the perseverance with which he pursued an enquiry of this 
sort. On that account I believe they will be read with some interest, even at 
the expense of the unavoidable iteration and repetition. Nor was the trouble 
needless, for though in 1855 Mr. Hewitson published the fact that the Grey 
Lag was the only species of Wild Goose breeding in Britain, yet the year 
after Mr. Yarrell, in the third edition of his ‘ British Birds,’ allowed the old 
fallacious statements to stand (ill. pp. 154, 155), and the erroneous belief can 
hardly be said to have received its death-blow until the late Mr. A. G. More 
was able to record, in ‘The Ibis’ for 1865 (p. 441), Sir William Jardine’s 
acceptance of the correction, which, but for Mr. Wolley’s exertions, might 
never have been made, since doubtless some would have held that the positive - 
statement of so competent an ornithologist as Mr. Se by must have been true, 
and even the careful investigations of Messrs. Harvie-Brown and Buckley 
would only have proved that the Bean-Goose did not in their time breed in 
the localities where it had been said to do some fifty years before. 
It may be remarked that the species of Wild Goose have long been liabie to 
confusion. Messrs. Hewitson and Hancock at first thought the Geese they 
found breeding in the islands on the west coast of Norway were Bean-Geese 
(as also did Mr. Dann, fide Yarrell, ‘ Brit. Birds,’ ed. 1, iii. pp. 61, 62), while 
they supposed that the Grey Lag occupied the high grounds of the interior— 
just the rever-e being the case. Consequently Mr. Hewitson figured (Brit. 
Ool. pl. exxvii.) an egg of the latter for the former in 1837. Before, 
however, his second edition was published, Mr. Hancock had found out the 
mistake, and then an egg of the Grey Lag was made to act for both species 
(pl. xcili, fig. 1, pp. 331, 352), the same thing being done in the third edition 
