114 GOOSE DUNG CHARACTER. 



Goose dung is a very powerful manure, and a 

 large flock would have considerable effect in fining 

 and improving the grass of coarse meadow-land. 

 Geese, as well as turkeys, it is well known, travel to 

 the London markets ; but it is not so generally 

 known that goose-feeding, in the vicinity of the me- 

 tropolis, is so large a concern, that one person 

 feeds for market upwards of five thousand in the 

 season. The best geese in England are, probably, 

 to be found on the borders of Suffolk and Norfolk, 

 and in Berkshire. Wild geese have not the supe- 

 riority of the wild duck, tasting of fish, and being far 

 inferior to the tame. The foreign fancy varieties of 

 the goose are chiefly ornamental for lawns and waters, 

 and as objects of curiosity. 



A GOOSE on a farm in Scotland, about ten years 

 since, of the clearly ascertained age of eighty-one 

 years, healthy and vigorous, was killed whilst sitting 

 over her eggs, by a sow ; it was supposed she might 

 have lived still many years, and her fecundity ap- 

 peared to be permanent. Other geese have been 

 proved to have reached the age of seventy years. 



It will not prove tedious, I trust, to dilate yet 

 awhile, in the anecdotal way, on this subject, though 

 a goose. There is something extremely anomalous 

 in the disposition of this apparently pacific and 

 harmless species, which, nevertheless, possesses high 

 courage, and is even naturally of pugnacious habits. 

 I have seen two geese fighting and tearing each 

 other with the utmost rage and virulence, as if de- 

 termined to fight it out, mordicus, to death, whilst 

 the gander stood looking on with the utmost apathy 



