BIRDS OF THE FARM AND THE FARM- YARD. 313 



on that account "), a bird of courage, and would not hesi- 

 tate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who 

 should invade his grounds with a red coat on. 



Wild Turkeys were formerly not uncommon in the 

 woods of New England. If any still remain they will 

 not long escape the besom of civilization and progress. 

 The Turkey will vanish with the Turtle-Dove and the 

 Quail, and go where arithmetic and trigonometry have 

 not yet mapped out the wilderness into auction-lots. 



THE GOOSE. 



The Goose is truly a pastoral bird. Though it uses 

 animal food, it lives more upon grain and by grazing, 

 like cattle and sheep. It is not a sea fowl. It devours 

 some insects, but does not take fishes, and resorts to the 

 water chiefly at night, where it retires to rest, for security. 

 It is the pastoral habit of the Goose that renders it so fit 

 a subject for domestication. On the same account it is a 

 better walker than the Duck, that passes the greater part 

 of its time in the water, feeding upon the aquatic vege- 

 tables that grow in the shallows and upon such insects 

 as are found among them. The Goose, notwithstanding 

 the general habit among us of using its name as the 

 superlative of folly, is an intelligent bird. The proverb 

 " silly as a Goose " would be more correctly applied to 

 a Hen or a Turkey. 



The Goose has no special beauty of plumage. Its colors 

 seldom vary from white and black and gray. The wild 

 Goose of America greatly surpasses the common domesti- 

 cated species in beauty, having some fine shades of green 

 and purple on the black feathers of its long swan-like 

 neck. Charles Waterton says of this species, which has 

 been very generally domesticated in Great Britain: "There 

 can be nothing more enlivening to rural solitude than the 



