BOOK X. Lxxix. 162-165 



Geese mate in the water ; they lay in spring, or Mativg 0/ 

 if they mated in midwinter, after midsummer ; they ^^^^"' 

 lav nearly 40 eggs, tuice in a year if the hens turn the 

 first brood out of the nest, otherwise sixteen eggs 

 at the most and seven at the fewest. If somebody 

 renioves the eggs, they go on laying till they burst. 

 They do not turn strange eggs out of the nest. It 

 pays best to put nine or eleven eggs for them to sit 

 on. The hens sit only 30 days at a time, or if the 

 days are rather warm, 25. The touch of a nettle 

 is fatal to goslings, and not less so is their greediness, 

 sometimes owing to their excessive gorging and 

 sometimes owing to their own violence, when they 

 have caught hold of a root in their beak and in their 

 repeated attempts to tear it offbreak their own necks 

 before they succeed. A nettle-root put under their 

 straw after they have lain in it is a cure for nettle- 

 sting. 



There are three kinds of heron, the white, the uatingoj 

 speckled and the dark.'' These birds suffer pain eagies'kites, 

 in matino^, indeed the cocks ffive loud screams and '^?^"^' ^"^" 

 even shed blood from their eyes ; and the broody swaiiows, 

 hens lay their eggs with equal difficulty. The eagle 

 sits on her eggs for thirty days at a time, and so do 

 the larger birds for the most part, but the smaller 

 ones, for instance the kite and hawk, sit for twenty 

 days. A kite's brood usually numbers two chicks, 

 never more than three, that of the bird called the 

 merUn as many as four, and the raven's occasionally 

 even five ; they sit for the same number of days. 

 The hen crow is fed by the cock while sitting. The 

 magpie's brood numbers nine, the blackcap^s* over 

 twenty and always an odd number, and no other 

 bird has a larger brood : so much more proHfic are 



397 



