398 THE WILD GOOSE. 



to domesticate many species of wild fowls, which would provo 

 useful to mankind, have often been abandoned in despair, when 

 a few years more of constant care might have produced the 

 desired effect." The Canada Goose, in spite of its original 

 migratory habits, which it appears in almost every case to 

 forget in England, shows much more disposition for true d> 

 mestication than the Swan, and may be maintained in perfect 

 health with very limited opportunities of bathing. 



The manner in which these birds are usually kept here, is 

 neither consistent with their natural habits, nor calculated to 

 develop their usefulness and merit. They are mostly retained 

 as ornaments to large parks, where there is an extensive range 

 of grass and water : so far, all is as it should be. But they 

 are there generally associated with other species of Geese and 

 water fowl, all being of a sociable disposition, and forming 

 one heterogeneous flock. In the breeding season, they neither 

 can agree among themselves to differ seriously, nor yet to live 

 together in peace ; the consequence is, that they interrupt each 

 other's love-making, keep up a constant bickering, without 

 coining to the decisive quarrels and battles that would set all 

 right; and in the end we have birds without mates, Eggs unferti- 

 lized, and now and then a few monstrous hybrids, which, how- 

 ever some curious persons may prize them, are as ugly as they 

 are unnatural, and by no means recompense by their rarity for 

 the absence of two or three broods of healthy legitimate gos- 

 lings. Many writers, Audubon among others, from whom 

 one would have expected a more healthy taste, speaks highly 

 of the half-bred Canada Goose. They are very large, it is 

 true, and may merit approbation on the table ; but with what- 

 ever other species the cross is made, they are hideously dis- 

 pleasing. An old-fashioned plan of sweeping chimneys was 

 to tie the legs of a Goose, pull her up and down by a string, 

 and let her dislodge the soot by the flapping of her wings. 

 This sounds cruel, and is not humane. But is it more barba- 





