212 THE DOMESTIC .GOOSE. 



come. Suppose the grey-legged goose extinct ; by no 

 means an impossibility. Then those who must have a 

 wild original from which to derive all our domestic 

 animals would be compelled to fall back on some other 

 species still less probable. It is surely a simpler 

 theory to suppose that creatures that were cotemporary 

 with the mammoth, have, like it, disappeared from the 

 earth in their wild state, but have survived as depen- 

 dents on man, than to engage in attempts at reconcil- 

 ing incongruities and discrepancies, which, after all, 

 cannot satisfy the mind, but leave it in as doubtful 

 a state as ever. 



Still less is the " white-fronted," the ancestor of the 

 domestic goose. Entirely white specimens of the 

 Anas albifrons are indeed occasionally hatched in con- 

 finement, and the common goose may now and then 

 exhibit traces of an admixture or dash of blood with 

 it, as it certainly does occasionally, of a cross with the 

 China goose (A. cygnoides) ; but these are mere im- 

 purities which wear out, and the race returns to the 

 well-known domestic type. And it will be allowed by 

 most persons who have possessed a variety of these 

 birds, and who have watched and tended them day by 

 day, that the domestic goose is sufficiently separated 

 from the grey-legged by the color of its feet and legs ; 

 from the white-fronted, by the extreme difference of its 

 voice, manner, time of incubation, color of the eyes, 

 greater thickness of neck, convexity of profile, and 

 many other particulars that are more easily perceived 

 than described. 



It might be urged, as a further essential difference, 

 that the ' domestic goose is polygamous, whereas all 

 wild geese that we are acquainted with are monoga- 

 mous. It is true that wild geese, in captivity, will 

 couple with the females of other species, but that takes 

 place by their utterly neglecting their own mate for 

 the time, not by entertaining two or more mistresses 

 at once. It will be replied, that habits of polyamy are 

 the effects of domestication ; but what proof have we 



