BIRDS KILLED BY THE ELECTRIC WIRES. 233 



fly against the electric wires. This could arise from 

 no individual experience in the younger birds, whether 

 bred there or migrated from other places ; but it must 

 be on account of some intuition or newly instilled 

 inherent caution, and it is not to be accounted for in 

 any other way. The wild geese killed at Berkeley 

 Castle are in fine condition and excellent eating, con- 

 sisting of four different species, — the grey lag, the 

 white-fronted goose, the bean-goose, and the pink-toed 

 goose. I doubt myself if the latter be a different 

 species, but am inclined to attribute the more delicate 

 hue of the foot to birds only of a younger age. The 

 hue of a leg in any bird is infinitely too slight a dis- 

 tinction by which to pronounce it a different species ; 

 but naturalists, like every other class of cognoscenti, 

 are always inclined to establish some new fact, and 

 very often in so doing find " a mare's nest." The 

 leg of an old partridge is white, and the leg of the 

 young birds in their first year of a yellowish hue ; 

 and if you carry out the inspection to the innumerable 

 variety in leg of the barn-door fowls, and by their 

 different hues attempt to establish a different species, 

 the English language would hardly find words enough 

 by which to distinguish the breeds. People talk of 

 two different species of the fox, the common fox and 

 the greyhound-fox, founding the difference on the 

 length of limb or different growth in one and the same 

 animal. This is nonsense ; and I believe it is much on 

 the same erroneous principle as that as to the pink- 

 toed geese. There are different sized puppies in every 

 litter, and the same fact applies to foxes. There is also 

 a very extraordinary change in the flocks of geese that 

 haunt the new grounds at Berkeley Castle ; it is, that 

 at a period of the winter the species congregating 



