214 BIRDS AND MAN 



ful impulse and homing faculty are employed as 

 an illustration, and admirably described : 



Flinging the salt from their wings, and despair from their hearts 

 They arise on the breast of the storm with a cry and are gone. 

 When will you come home, wild geese, in your thousand 



strong ? . . . 

 Not the fierce wind can stay your return or tumultuous 



sea, . . . 

 Only death in his reaping could make yon return no more. 



Now arctic and antarctic geese are alike in this 

 their devotion to their distant breeding-ground, 

 the cradle and true home of the species or race ; 

 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 district 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 



