430 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: ZOOLOGY. 



were perfect in everything ; and, moving from him, half paused at inter- 

 vals, half turning first to one side then the other, inclining their heads as 

 they went. Here our old friend rose and paced up and down the floor, 

 bowing to this side and that and making other suitable gestures, to try to 

 give us some faint idea of the birds' gentle courtesy and exquisite grace. 

 It was, he assured us, most atonishing ; the birds' gestures and motions 

 were those of a human being, but in their perfection immeasurably superior 

 to anything of the kind to be seen in any Court in Europe or the world. 



"The birds he had described, I told him, were no doubt Upland Geese. 



" 'Geese! ' he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise and disgust. 'Are you 

 speaking seriously? Geese! Oh, no, nothing like geese — a sort of 

 ostrich ! ' 



"It was plain that he had no accurate knowledge of birds ; if he had 

 caught sight of a kingfisher or green woodpecker, he would probably 

 have described it as a sort of peacock. Of the goose, he only knew that 

 it is a ridiculous, awkward creature, proverbial for its stupidity, although 

 very good to eat ; and it wounded him to find that any one could think 

 so meanly of his intelligence and taste as to imagine him capable of greatly 

 admiring any bird called a goose." (W. H. Hudson, Birds and Man, 

 pp. 197-202, 1 90 1.) 



"And I will conclude this chapter with an incident related to me many 

 years ago by a brother who was sheep-farming in a wild and lonely dis- 

 trict on the southern frontier of Buenos Ayres. Immense numbers of 

 upland geese in great flocks used to spend the cold months on the plains 

 where he had his lonely hut ; and one morning in August in the early 

 spring of that southern country, some days after all the flocks had taken 

 their departure to the south, he was out riding, and saw at a distance 

 before him on the plain a pair of geese. They were male and female — 

 a white and a brown bird. Their movements attracted his attention and 

 he rode to them. The female was walking steadily on in a southerly 

 direction, while the male, greatly excited, and calling loudly from time to 

 time, walked at a distance ahead, and constantly turned back to see and 

 call to his mate, and at intervals of a few minutes he would rise up and 

 fly, screaming, to a distance of some hundreds of yards ; then finding that 

 he had not been followed, he would return and alight at a distance of 

 forty or fifty yards in advance of the other bird, and began walking on as 

 before. The female had one wing broken, and, unable to fly, had set 



