GREY LAG GOOSE. 3 



it did so till near the close of tlie last century* is most 

 probable, as the banishment of so many other feathered 

 denizens of that district commenced only with those 

 agricultural changes which, in course of time, have 

 altogether obliterated its natural features. There the 

 gozzard's occupation, as we know, has been gone for 

 many years, but tradition still refers to a period not 

 very remote, when young geese were regularly tended 

 after the method described by Pennant as prevailing 

 in Lincolnshire. Mr. Alfred Newton, who in 1853, 

 took some pains to enquire into these matters, on 

 the spot, was informed by a man named Spencer, of 

 Feltwell (then in his fifty-third year), that he was told 

 by his father, who had died some fifteen years before, 

 that when a boy he used to keep young wild geese in 

 the- fens. They were taken when very young, and were 

 " led " out to feed in the fens until they were quite fat. 

 Such hearsay evidence is, of course, far less satis- 

 factory than contemporary records, but it seems more 

 than probable that these young geese were really, 

 as described, bred wild in the fen, and presuming 

 Spencer's father to have been ten years of age when 

 thus employed, it would not be far short of a century 

 ago. Hunt in his " British Ornithology," of which 

 the second volume was published in 1815, although 

 making no special allusion to our Norfolk fens, says of 

 this species, "formerly numbers of them bred and 

 continued the whole year in the fens of Lincolnshire and 

 other swamps contiguous to our eastern coasts. But the 



* Daniel, in the third volume of his "Eural Sports/' pub- 

 lished in 1812 (p. 249), remarks in reference to this species "the 

 compiler took two broods one season, which he turned down, after 

 having pinioned them, with the common geese, both parties 

 seemed shy at first, but they soon associated and remained very 

 good friends." Unfortunately the author omits the date and 

 locality. 



B 2 



