80 RAPIDITY OF FLIGHT. 



a body to the more northerly lakes, the nearest of which 

 must be five or six hundred miles off, where they breed 

 and constantly reside during the summer; but in the 

 beginning of winter, the parent birds return with their 

 young ones, each alighting with its brood at the door to 

 which it belongs. That nights of this sort are not con- 

 fined to Russia, we may learn, from the following instance, 

 corroborating the fact just mentioned. A gentleman 

 walking near Aberdeen, in Scotland, one morning, during 

 a heavy gale which blew from the north-west, was at 

 tracted by aloud cackling overheard : from the awkward 

 motion of their wings, he was certain they were not wild 

 Ducks, and they seemed to him to be helped on as much 

 by the wind as their own exertions. He next day heard 

 that the duck-pond of a person in the neighbourhood had 

 been deserted the morning before about the time he saw 

 them, by thirty Geese, which had all taken flight, and 

 not been since heard of. 



An instance of uncommon flight, though not to the 

 extent of the above, occurred not long ago in Yorkshire. 

 A person had a large flock of Geese, which fed on high 

 ground not visible from the house. They were lessened, 

 as occasion required, to about six; these were fetched 

 home every night, for some weeks ; and very frequently, 

 on seeing the house from the top of the hill, they would 

 take wing, and fly homewards, making a circuit of about 

 a mile. On one occasion, they were on the point of 

 alighting on a pond of water, near the next farm-house, 

 instead of a smaller one near home; they soon, however, 

 discovered their mistake, and raised themselves in the 

 air, to nearly as great a height as before, alighting on 

 their own water; and were there long before their driver, 

 notwithstanding that he went mostly in a direct line. 

 These flights were considered as particularly remarkable, 

 because the Geese were, at the time, quite fat and heavy. 

 We have a similar instance of a common tame Duck, in 

 Hertfordshire, which was in the constant habit of taking 

 flights, with the same power, and at the same height, as 



