6 4 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



Family ANA TID^E. 



THE BEAN GOOSE. 







Aiiser segelii/n, GMEL. 



THE Bean Goose, in its habits and plumage, so closely resembles the next to 

 be described, (Anser brachyrhynchus) ', that it is extremely difficult to define 

 the range of the two in Great Britain. From the time of the Scotch ornithologist, 

 Macgillivray downwards, much confusion and uncertainty has existed, not only 

 regarding the specific distinction, but also the habitat of the two species, and it 

 is only in recent, years that the great increase in local lists of birds, and county 

 histories of the same, has increased our knowledge of the subject. 



There can be no possible doubt and the accumulation of evidence is over- 

 whelming that at the commencement of this century, the Bean Goose was the 

 common species of the low-lying districts, next the sea, in Lincolnshire, arriving 

 with the greatest regularity as the season came round at the close of bean-harvest, 

 about the middle of October hence its name, Bean Goose. It is equally certain 

 that at the present time, the Pink-footed Goose is the common species of the 

 Humber district, having gradually usurped the position of the once familiar and 

 old-fashioned species. 



This change has, I believe, been brought about by the altered conditions of 

 agriculture, enclosure of those vast open fields, which at one time surrounded 

 each village, the decline of bean cultivation, and the gradual substitution of 

 rotation cropping green and corn crops alternately. We learn from Arthur 

 Young's "Agricultural Survey," (1798), that the small country towns and villages, 

 in the middle-marsh and sea-marsh districts of Lincolnshire, were surrounded by 

 vast open fields, arable lands, cow and horse pastures, and furze ; on strong land 

 the rotation was fallows, wheat, beans, and again fallows. The area under beans 

 in the low country was enormous, the wheat stubbles being ploughed once, and 

 the beans sown broadcast in the spring, and never cleaned. These were harvested 

 late in the autumn, usually got with much loss from the jaws of winter. These 

 were the days of the Grey Goose, which our observant forefathers called the Bean 

 Goose, (Anser segetuni), coming in great flocks in the later autumn to feast on 

 the shelled beans in the open fields ; and this continued, till the change in 



