THE BEENT GOOSE. 143 







"they collect," says Wilson, "in one large body, and 

 making an extensive spiral course, some miles in diame- 

 ter, rise to a great height in the air, and then steer for 

 the sea, over which they uniformly travel ; often making 

 wide circuits to avoid passing over a projecting point of 

 land. In these aerial routes, they have been often met 

 with many leagues from shore, travelling the whole night. 

 Their line of march very much resembles that of the 

 Canada Goose, with this exception, that frequently three 

 or four are crowded together in front, as if striving for 

 precedency." 



To such a length is this terror of the land passage car- 

 ried by the Brent Goose, that no doubt can be, I think, 

 reasonably entertained that, in order to avoid it, they 

 make the whole of their vast migration, to and fro, from 

 their breeding-places hither, and vice versa, in direct con- 

 tradiction to the custom of their congenors, the Canada 

 Geese, which travel from point to point, in direct lines, 

 directed by an instinct certain as the compass, and travel- 

 ling the boundless wildernesses and vast inland waters 

 of the northern territories, and the cultivated regions 

 which intervene between those and their winter haunts 

 on the seashores of the Atlantic, with unrivaled speed 

 and unerring sagacity. A pretty certain proof of this is 

 to be found in the fact, that on the northern shores of 

 Lakes Huron and Superior, and in the small rice lakes 

 adjoining them, although abounding in their favorite 

 food, the eel-grass, and frequented in myriads of millions 



