THE BERNACLE. 47 



During the day I saw two flocks, of one or two hundred pairs, 

 upon the bogs. They are, when sufficiently rested from their 

 joui'uey, sought for with great avidity by tlie few gunners in tliis 

 district, and are very delicious," &g., as already mentioned. This 

 was written as " winter was coming on." 0\^'ing to wild geese 

 being commonly called bernacle in Connaught, I cannot feel 

 certain that they are not meant. Harris, in his ' History of the 

 County of Down,' published in 1744, after enumerating the 

 " barnacle" as one of the birds met with on the coast, remarks : 

 — " There is also the land barnacle in tliis county, particularly in 

 a red bog in the Ai'des, near Kirkistown, but the flesh of it 

 is rank, unsavoury, and unfit for, at all events, the table." 

 Here, again, the wild goose may possibly be alluded to, as it fre- 

 quented the locality. La7id bernacle is, however, a common name 

 for the species now specially under consideration, and a distinctive 

 one, as the bird spends much of its time on land, whereas the 

 other bernacle, properly called brent goose, lives wholly on the 

 water and the sea-banks. 



xVt Lurgan Green immense numbers of bernacle spend all the 

 year, except the period appropriated to the reproduction of their 

 species ; they are about five months absent, from tlie middle of 

 April "^ to that of September. This locaHty is known to me per- 

 sonally only from my passing it on the way from Belfast to Dublin, 

 which I have rarely done without seeing large flocks of these 

 birds (numbering sometimes between 300 and 400) either on the 

 sands or greensward little raised above it. My notes on them here, 

 chiefly with regard to season, are; — March 31, 1833 ; saw a very 

 large flock on the sands near the road: — April 21, 1835; none 

 seen ; on inquiry of the guard of the coach, it was stated that he 

 had remarked them here daily until the last eight days, when they 

 had disappeared, at least from view of the road : they had probably 

 migrated northward at the time he ceased to observe them : — 

 November 15, 1839; a large flock was stationed at the grassy 

 plain, a considerable way from the border of the sea, as I had 



* ]\Ir. Selby, in allusion it may be presumed to the uorth-cast of England, observes 

 that, " by the middle of March the whole have retired " northward (p. 209). 



