GEESE 209 



this their devotion to their distant breeding- 

 ground, the cradle and true home of the species 

 or race ; and I will conclude this chapter with an 

 incident related to me many years ago by a 

 brother who was sheep-farming in a wild and 

 lonely district on the southern frontier of Buenos 

 Ayres. Immense numbers of upland geese in 

 great flocks used to spend the cold months on 

 the plains where he had his lonely hut ; and one 

 morning in August in the early spring of that 

 southern country, some days after all the flocks 

 had taken their departure to the south, he was 

 out riding, and saw at a distance before him on 

 the plain a pair of geese. They were male and 

 female — a white and a brown bird. Their move- 

 ments attracted his attention and he rode to 

 them. The female was walking steadUy on in a 

 southerly direction, while the male, greatly excited, 

 and calling loudly from time to time, walked at a 

 distance ahead, and constantly turned back to 

 see and caU to his mate, and at intervals of a few 

 minutes he would rise up and fly, screaming, to a 

 distance of some hundreds of yards ; then finding 

 that he had not been followed, he would return 



and alight at a distance of forty or fifty yards in 



p 



