THE BRENT GOOSE. 148 
“they collect,” says Wilson, “in one large body, and 
making an extensive spiral course, some milés in diame- 
ter, rise to a great height in the air, and then steer for 
the sea, over which they uniformly travel; often making 
wide circuits to avoid passing over a projecting point of 
land. In these aerial routes, they have been often met 
with many leagues from shore, travelling the whole night. 
Their line of march very much resembles that of the 
Canada Goose, with this exception, that frequently three 
or four are crowded together in front, as if striving for 
precedency.” : 
To such a length is this terror of the land passage car- 
ried by the Brent Goose, that no doubt can be, I think, 
reasonably entertained that, in order to avoid it, they 
make the whole of their vast migration, to and fro, from 
their breeding-places hither, and eéce versa, in direct con- 
tradiction to the custom of their congenors, the Canada 
Geese, which travel from point to point, in direct lines, 
directed by an instinct certain as the compass, and travel- 
ling the boundless wildernesses and vast inland waters 
of the northern territories, and the cultivated regions 
which intervene between those and their winter haunts 
on the seashores of the Atlantic, with unrivaled speed 
and unerring sagacity. A pretty certain proof of this is 
to be found in the fact, that on the northern shores of 
Lakes Huron and Superior, and-in the small rice lakes 
adjoining them, although abounding in their favorite 
food, the eel-grass, and frequented in myriads of millions 
