194 BIRDS AND MAN 



graceful and majestical, with arched neck and 

 ruffled scapulars ; the oriental pea-fowl in his 

 glittering mantle; the helmeted guinea-fowl, 

 powdered with stars, and the red cock with his 

 military bearing — a shining Elizabethan knight 

 of the feathered world, singer, lover, and fighter. 

 It is hardly to be doubted that, mentally, the 

 goose is above aU these ; and to my mind his, 

 too, is the nobler figure ; but it is a very familiar 

 figure, and we have not forgotten the reason 

 of its presence among us. He satisfies a material 

 want only too generously, and on this account is 

 too much associated in the mind with mere 

 flavours. We keep a swan or a peacock for 

 ornament; a goose for the table — he is the 

 Michaelmas and Christmas bird. A somewhat 

 similar debasement has fallen on the sheep in 

 Australia, To the man in the bush he is 

 nothing but a tallow -elaborating organism, 

 whose destiny it is to be cast, at maturity, into 

 the melting vat, and whose chief use it is to 

 lubricate the machinery of civilisation. It a 

 little shocks, and at the same time amuses, 

 our Colonial, to find that great artists in the 

 parent country admire this most unpoetic 



