104 THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 



summer haunts of the Grey Lag are mainly confined to the 

 nort h_from northern Scotland to Iceland, Scandinavia and 

 Russia but in winter it descends to warmer regions on the 

 western and southern coasts of the continent. It is the 

 largest of our wild geese, a fine bird with a general grey 

 and brown plumage on the upper surfaces, shading backwards 

 into ashy grey and into creamy white on the under parts. 



Several facts suggest that the Grey Lag was domesti- 

 cated in Scotland. In the first place it is a frequent winter 

 visitor to Scotland, generally arriving from its northern 

 breeding haunts in September and November, and remaining 

 with us over the colder months. More important, it still 

 breeds here, in Ross-shire, Sutherland, Caithness and in the 

 Outer Hebrides, and it is moreover the only kind of wild 

 goose which nests in Scotland. Even so, it was at one time 

 much more common both as a resident species and as a visitor 

 than it is to-day. So we gather at any rate from its relative 

 price as established in a controlled food list of 1551, where 

 the value of a "wild guse of the great bind" a Grey Lag 

 is fixed at 2s., while i8</. is the value set upon the smaller 

 kinds, "claik, quink and rute" the Barnacle Goose, the 

 Golden Eye Duck and the Brent Goose. Besides, even so 

 late as the latter half of the eighteenth century it was still 

 breeding in the fens of England. 



In the second place, the Grey Lag is easily tamed, so 

 that its suggested domestication in Scotland need imply no 

 special skill on the part of its domesticators. The Lap- 

 landers regularly tame the wild Grey Lag; and there are 

 several instances of individuals captured young or hatched 

 from eggs having become half-domesticated in various parts 

 of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. In the last named 

 country there is a numerous colony of semi-domesticated 

 Grey Lag Geese which has been in existence since about 

 1700 at Castle Coole, near Enniskillen, and only in this con- 

 dition does the species breed in Ireland. In Scotland well- 

 known flocks were established in 1 886 in South Harris, and in 

 1888 at Blair Drummond. The birds paired and nested and 

 hatched their broods year in, year out, in perfect contentment. 

 In fact our wild geese show a particular aptitude for losing 

 their wild identity even with slight encouragement, and I 

 have seen a Pink-footed Goose, which had been found injured 



