WILD WINGS: A FAREWELL 311 



ing the green marshes or meadows sacred to the wild 

 geese. And here, before we came to the little 

 Holkham station, I had my last sight of them. Looking 

 out I spied a party of about a dozen Egyptian 

 geese, on a visit to their wild relations, from 

 Holkham Park close by, and as the train ap- 

 proached they became alarmed and finally rose up 

 with much screaming and cackling and flew from 

 us, showing their strongly contrasted colours, black 

 and red and glistening white, to the best advantage. 

 Now a very little further on a flock of about eight 

 hundred wild geese were stationed. They were all 

 standing with heads raised to see the train pass within 

 easy pistol shot ; yet in spite of all the noise and steam 

 and rushing motion, and of the outcry the semi- 

 domestic Egyptians had raised, and their flight, these 

 wild geese, the most persecuted and wariest birds in 

 the world, uttered no sound of alarm and made no 

 movement ! 



A better example of this bird's intelligence could 

 not have been witnessed ; nor — from the point of 

 view of those who dream of a more varied and nobler 

 wild-bird life than we have now been reduced to in 

 England — could there have been a more perfect 

 object lesson. 



