278 WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 



Through the rough, dark months of winter, in what sunny clime, 

 'Mid green lagoons and savannahs, passed ye the delicious time ? 

 Haply amid verdurous islands where the Mexic hillows smile, 

 'Mid sweet flower-glades and gay plumage ye would riot all the 

 while; 



Haply amid red flamingoes, hovering o'er some lilied lake, 

 Where the aloe drops its branches and the palms their branches 

 shake. 



Isaac McLellan. 



The wild goose is so familiar to nearly every citizen 

 of the United States, that it seems quite superfluous to 

 call public attention to it scientifically and historically, 

 except in a casual manner. Those great ornithologists 

 Audubon and Wilson, besides others have treated of it 

 so exhaustively, that, combined with the practical ob- 

 servation the reader may have had, it may possibly be 

 " love's labor lost " with many, for me to describe its 

 habits, resorts, peculiarities and bi-eeding places. 



Their ancestry, their origin, wheil and where first 

 ■discovered, dates back, one might say, " to a time when 

 the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." 

 There is no time in the history of the world that we 

 can trace back, and find them unknown.' In England 

 they were seen and known hundreds of years ago. 

 Acclimated and domesticated in Ancient Rome, they 

 served as sentinels to warn the sleeping inhabitants of 

 that city of the enemy's approach, which event occurred 

 soon after the Eternal City had been furrowed out by 

 Romulus and Remus ; and to go still further back, to 

 pre-historic times — to a time when Noah, according to 

 Divine instruction, had filled the Ark with two of 

 every living kind, we can imagine a pair of these geese 

 a trifle late to gain entrance through the sealed doors 

 of the ark, swimming round and round the vessel, nois- 

 ily clamoring for admission. 



