236 THE AMERICAN WILD GOOSE. 



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 fowls, 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 live 

 together in peace ; the consequence is, that they inter- 

 rupt each other's love-making, keep up a constant 

 bickering, without coming to the decisive quarrels and 

 battles that would set all right ; and in the end. we have 

 birds without mates, eggs unfertilised, and now and then 

 a few monstrous hybrids, which, however much some 

 curious persons may prize them, are as ugly as they are un- 

 natural, and by no means recompense by their rarity for 

 the absence of two or three broods of healthy legitimate 

 goslings. Many writers speak highly of the half-bred 

 Canada goose. They are very large, it is true, and may 

 merit approbation on the table ; but with whatever other 

 species the cross is made, they are hideously dis- 

 pleasing. 



The facility with which the Canada goose, captured 

 wild, is tamed, while yet it retains a "trick of the old 

 nature," is well exemplified in a story related by Wilson, 

 on the authority of a correspondent for whose veracity 

 he avouches ; which story, he observes, is paralleled by 

 others of the same import. " Mr. Platt, a respectable 

 farmer on Long Island, being out shooting in one of the 

 bays, which, in that part of the country, abound with 

 water fowl, wounded a wild goose. Being wing-tipped 

 and unable to fly, he caught it and brought it home 

 alive. It proved to be a female, and turning it into his 

 yard with a flock of tame geese, it soon became quite 

 tame and familiar, and in a little time its wounded wing 

 entirely healed. In the following spring, when the wild 

 geese migrated to the northward, a flock passed over Mr. 

 Platt's barn yard, and just at that moment, their leader 

 happening to sound his bugle note, our goose, in whom 

 its new habits and enjoyments had not quite extinguished 

 the love of liberty, remembering the well-known sound, 

 spread its wings, moved in the air, joined the travellers, 

 and soon disappeared. In the succeeding autumn, the 



