GREY LAG GOOkE. 13 



quantities they are still driven up to Norwich from the 

 surrounding country. Besides other routes, large num- 

 bers journeyed by way of Thetford and Newmarket, but 

 of late years the rapid transit of such goods to all parts 

 of the kingdom has done much towards developing the 

 present enormous business in this class of poultry. 

 Mr. Hunt quotes from the "St. James' Chronicle" of 

 September, 1783, a notice "of a drove of about nine 

 thousand geese which passed through Chelmsford on 

 their way to London from Suffolk." The drivers used 

 to be provided with a long stick, with a red rag at one 

 end and a hook at the other; by the former they were 

 excited forward, and by the latter stragglers were caught 

 by the neck and kept in order, and a hospital cart 

 attended each drove to accommodate the lame ones. 

 They are said to have performed the journey at the rate 

 of eight or ten miles a day, from three in the morning 

 till nine at night. 



During the late severe winter of 1870-1, when the 

 more common species of wild geese were unusually 

 numerous, I could not ascertain that any grey lags had 

 been observed amongst them, but as late as the 23rd 

 of March, a young bird was shot by the Rev. C. J. 

 Lucas, in Burgh Fen, near Yarmouth, apparently a 

 straggler, as no other geese appear to have been re- 

 marked in the neighbourhood at that time. This bird 

 on dissection proved to be a female, and though in 

 immature plumage, had the lower part of the back grey, 



Orford and the Marquis of Queensbury, in 1740, that a drove of 

 geese would beat an equal number of turkeys in a race from 

 Norwich to London; the result being as Lord Orford predicted. 

 The geese kept on the road at a steady pace, whilst the turkeys at 

 night flew into the roadside trees to roost, and were dislodged with 

 much difficulty in the morning by the drivers. The geese not 

 wanting to stop and sleep, thus beat the turkeys hollow, arriving in 

 Londun two days before the turkeys. 



