436 THE WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. 



miliar they may become, so as even to eat from the hand of 

 their keeper, are yet in their hearts as un tameable as a fly; and 

 must, therefore, be kept in complete, though to many eyes in- 

 visible restraint, lest they withdraw themselves completely 

 from all human control; and whose taste for domestication 

 does not seem to increase, though many successive generations 

 of them have been bred in captivity. In this class we have 

 the Swan, the Teal, the common Gallinule, the Pheasant, the 

 Nycthemerus, and indeed all the inmates of our cages, avia- 

 ries, and menageries, that are not included in the first and 

 second classes. 



It is clear that from the second class alone can we hope to 

 obtain any useful and profitable addition to our stock of Poul- 

 try. A bird must be found to belong undoubtedly to that, 

 before it can be promoted into the first class. The great diffi- 

 culty in looking over this unlimited third class, is to discover 

 which species may be advanced into the second. Some are 

 decidedly hopeless cases. The Swan, for instance, and the 

 Pheasant, are no more likely at this moment to become domes- 

 tic than they were when first discovered amidst the streams 

 and copses of Western Asia. Ages before the discovery of 

 America, while the Turkey remained yet unsuspicious of the 

 settler's rifle, they were as domestic as they now are, and as 

 they are ever likely to be. It is true Temminck speaks of 

 the Oygne Domestique, and says that it "lives in domesticity 

 in most countries, very abundant in Holland" but the term 

 domesticity appears only likely to lead into error, when applied 

 to a creature that hates the confinement of a house, pining and 

 wasting if compelled to remain long in one, the use of whose 

 wings is obliged to be curtailed by amputation, which is kept 

 within bounds on a stream only by mutual jealousy and the 

 difficulty it has in travelling far by land, to say nothing of 

 park-palings and mill-dams.^ 



The White-fronted Goose is an excellent example of our 



