POULTRY 7 



would have taken them all over Europe. Our 

 own people most likely got them from the 

 Greeks or the Phoenicians, who carried on 

 trade in this part of Europe long before the 

 Romans found it out. The fowl has always 

 been kept more widely than any other tame 

 bird, as it is so useful and so easy to manage, 

 so that it is not surprising that many savages 

 were found keeping it when Europeans first 

 discovered them, just as Caesar's early Britons 

 were doing in his day. 



But there was another tame bird that he 

 found in their possession as well, the goose, 

 and this is one of our own British birds, for 

 wild geese still breed in a few places here, 

 mostly in the North of Scotland, and no doubt 

 in those old days, when so much of the country 

 was marsh land, they were quite common. 

 But it may not have been these geese that the 

 Britons had tamed, because the Greeks in 

 Homer's time, who were much more civilized 

 than the ancient Britons were, seem to have 

 looked on tame geese as something valuable, 

 and we hear of them being white. Now, wild 

 geese are grey, and when we hear of white 

 ones we may be pretty sure they had been 



