110 BRITISH BIRDS. 



the East Riding ; and reference is made to an " elegant book published by 

 Prof. Muirhead, 1857, entitled 'Winged Words on Chantrey's Woodcocks,' 

 which contains, including translations, nearly 200 epigrams on the sculp- 

 tured birds." " Gen. Oglethorpe, who died 1785, frequently killed Woodcocks 

 where Conduit Street, London, now stands. He was the best shot at birds on 

 the wing in his day " (' Round about Piccadilly,' by H. B. Wheatley, p. 189). 



ANSER FERUS. 



(The Grey-legged Goose, or Grey Lag Goose.) 



Commonly supposed to be the ancestor of our domestic Goose. 



Sir J. Emmerson Tennent, in his ' Ceylon,' p. 487, says : — " The same 

 word appears to designate Goose in the most remote quarters of the globe. 

 The Pali term, ' hansa,' by which it is known to the Buddhists of Ceylon, is 

 still the ' henza ' of the Burmese and the ' gangsa ' of the Malays, and is to 

 be traced in the ' xw ' of the Greeks, the ' anser ' of the Romans, the ' ganso,' 

 of the Portuguese, the ' ansar ' of the Spaniards, the ' Gans ' of the Germans 

 (who, Pliny says, called the White Geese ' ganza '}, the ' gas ' of the Swedes, 

 and the ' gander ' of the English." 



The following excerpt from S. Hill's 'Siberia' (vol. ii. p. 211), though 

 it does not refer to Anser ferus, is valuable, as derived from original observa- 

 tion : — " I had chanced to have many opportunities of observing the habits 

 of Geese in North America whilst feeding, on their passage towards the south 

 before the setting-in of winter. Resting and sleeping on the edge of the ice 

 when it is breaking up as they are proceeding north in the spring, we had 

 occasion to witness their high order of instinct in Siberia. I happened to 

 reside where the windows looked upon an open bay, frozen during the winter. 

 In the spring, as the weather broke, the rapid current always first opened a long 



