PINK-FOOTED GOOSE. 345 



once witnessed a puzzled and diverting condition of their own 

 phalanx. The day had suddenly become foggy to an uncommon 

 degree. As I was amusing myself in my garden, I heard the wild 

 geese advancing at some distance. When they had come almost 

 directly over the spot where I was, they seemed to have become 

 seized with an immediate panic, from an apprehension that they 

 had either lost their way, or could no longer proceed in safety 

 through the mist. The noise they made in consequence was like 

 the twanging of a thousand instruments of brass. Sometimes they 

 seemed to descend in a body so near the earth that a stone thrown 

 vigorously from the hand might, as it seemed, have brought some 

 of them to the ground. Again they mounted to a much greater 

 height and the noise and the perplexity continued for about 

 twenty minutes the birds still hovering over nearly the same 

 spot of ground. No person who heard the noise could doubt 

 that their fear and perplexity were extreme. At length they found 

 some way of escape; but whether a breeze had opened up to them 

 the distant prospect which they sought for, or whether they had 

 ascended to a higher region above the fog, or whether some goose 

 more sagacious and possessed of greater authority than the rest, 

 had undertaken to pilot them through the mist, I was not able to 

 determine. The impression, however, on my mind at the time was, 

 they were a very fit emblem of some popular assemblies which I 

 have seen, [let us hope the reverend writer does not refer to 

 meetings of presbytery] when, like the wild geese, they too are at 

 a stand about some puzzling question, and know not how to proceed. 

 The noise and the dissonance were very much of the same kind." 



THE PINK -FOOTED GOOSE. 



ANSER BRACHYRHYNCHUS. 



THE late Mr John Macgillivray announced many years ago that 

 he had found the Pink-footed Goose breeding in considerable 

 numbers on the islands in the Sound of Harris, and also on the 

 lakes of North Uist; but subsequent observations have proved 

 that he had mistaken the grey-lag for that species. The Pink- 

 footed Goose is, in fact, only found in the winter months in any 

 part of Scotland ; and, with the exception of the western islands, 

 no locality can boast of it in any numbers. In Montrose basin 



