A FEW WORDS ON FEN-LAND. 211 



" One thousand Geese will consume five 12-stone sacks of oats per night ; 

 they eat turnips and oats, and make good manure. A Goose-house smells, 

 no doubt; hut I like it. We send a few birds alive to town still, for the 

 Jews, and some fowls also. The Dutch and French Geese are not so good 

 for the table as the Lincolnshire ones ; ours are the best. When they used 

 to travel by road, a man drove a few first ; the rest would then follow. A 

 cart used to go behind to carry the corn, and to pick up the sick — though 

 some Geese improve on the road. Their pace is one mile per hour, and the 

 journey ten miles per day." I have seen the baby asleep in the goose-house. 



Another person states that they were driven by men with long sticks, 

 each of which had a red flag to it, and it is now about thirty-one years since 

 the journey by road was quite given up. They were caught with a hook 

 round the neck, and marked with blue on the head, and some on the back. 



Thirty-nine years ago (i. e. about 1838) is given by a different source as 

 the last time Geese walked to London. All agree that they "made bad 

 neighbours ;" they used to come into the corn-fields in the night and at day- 

 light, and were sad marauders *. 



Holinshed, in his ' Chronicles,' vol. i. chap ii. p. 374, has the following 

 account : — 



" In the countrie, where their geese are driven to the field like heards 

 of cattel by a gooseheard, it is strange to me to see or heare of geese to be 



* This habit was not confined to tame Geese, or even to Anser ferus ; for Daniel says (' Rural 

 Sports,' vol. iii. p. 356) that in the winter of 1740, on the coast of Picardy, the Brent Geese spoiled 

 all the corn on the sea-coast. He appears to have taken the account of this prodigious flight of 

 birds from Latham (vol. x. p. 260), who remarks that they tore up by the roots all the corn near 

 the sea. " The inhabitants attacked them with clubs, and killed numbers ; but the quantity was 

 so great that it did not avail much ; nor were they relieved from this scourge till the nortli wind 

 which had brought them had ceased." 



