52 ANATID.E. 



the northern part of the Irish channel/' Their chief haunts 

 known to me are, to begin northward, l^oughs Swilly, Foyle, 

 Lame, Belfast, Strangford, Dublin Bay,"^ the harbours of Wex- 

 ford, Waterford, Youghal, and Cork. In Kerry they are confined 

 to Tralee Bay, being abundant there during winter ;t and are 

 stated to be so likewise in the bays of Connaught. 



The bird is thus mentioned by the following authors : — 

 According to Boate's ' Natural History of Ireland,' published in 

 1726, " barnacles are of the wild-goose kind, and like them migrate 

 from foreign countries to Ireland ; they commonly come into Ireland in 

 August, and leave it about March ; their taste is very different, accord- 

 ing to the places where they feed ; in most places they are so rank 

 that no curious palate can dispense with such unsavoury food ; but in 

 other places they have a most dehcious relish, rather better than either 

 a wild duck, teal, or snipe.t This is the case of the barnacles at 

 Londonderry and Wexford, and I hear the same concerning those at 

 Belfast : the difference, I understand, arises from the food ; at London- 

 derry, in the bay commonly called Lough Foyle, there grows a grass 

 that sends out a stalk above a fathom long, the root of which is white 

 and tender, and continues such for some space above the root, and it 

 is almost as sweet as a sugar-cane : § the barnacles dive to the bottom 

 and lay hold on it as near as they can to the root, and pull it up with 

 them to the surface of the water, aud eat the tender part of it, the rest 

 they let drive with the wind to the shore, where it hes in great heaps, 



* Very common from November to April, (Mr. R. J. Montgomery.) 



t Mr. R. Chute. 



+ In works published in 1848 and 1849, opposite opinions are expressed re- 

 specting the quality of this bird as food. The Rev. E. S. Dixon, in his volume on 

 'Ornamental and "Domestic Poultry,' when expatiating on white-fronted geese, al- 

 ludes to an unfounded supposition that "their flesh would be fishy, as in the scai-cely 

 eatable brent goose" (p. 94) ; and in another place mentions this bird as "fishy 

 strong, and oily" (p. 151). Mr. Knox, on the contrary, in his 'Ornithological 

 Rambles in Sussex,' remarks on it :— " This is the best bii-d I ever tasted; the flesh 

 is as tender and juicy as that of a teal, and there is a total absence of the fishy flavour, 

 which renders so many of our water-fowl unfit for the table" (p. 236). 



§ Hence, we may presume, set down in a work published in 1837 as Tunis sac- 

 charinus ! In the description of the county of Londonderry, in Lewis's ' Topogra- 

 phical Dictionary of Ireland' (vol. ii. p. 294), we learn that " Among wild-fowl, one 

 species is very remarkable, the barnacle, which frequents Lough Foyle in great num- 

 bers, and is h'ere much esteemed for the sweetness of its flesh, in lijce manner as at 

 Wexford and Strangford, though elsewhere rank and unsavoury; tliis difterence 

 arises from its here feeding on the lucus saccharhms." 



