THE AMERICAN WILD GOOSE. 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



Every portion of it, (the young of the wild goose bred in the 

 inland districts, and procured in September,) is useful to Man ; 

 for besides the value of the flesh, as an article of food, the fea- 

 thers, the quills, and the fat, are held in request. 



Audubon. 



The history of the " Canada" or " wild goose," as it 

 is usually called, both in a state of nature and in cap- 

 tivity, has been so well and so fully delineated by the 

 ablest ornithologists of Europe, as well as of this country, 

 that for me to attempt giving complete details respecting 

 it, would be either to restate the same facts in less ap- 

 propriate language, perhaps, or to draw too liberally 

 from the stores ,of those who have written before me ; 

 yet this bird is by far too important, in every respect, to 

 be entirely omitted in the present series ; and there are a 

 few points respecting it which ought. to be brought into 

 more prominent notice. Most writers on poultry call 

 it a variety of the common goose. But it is no more a 

 variety of goose than the swan is a variety of goose. 

 Cuvier seems to doubt whether it is a goose at all, and 

 says that it cannot be properly separated from the true 

 swans. Audubon kept, some three years, and though 

 the old birds refused to breed in confinement, their 

 young, which he had captured together with them, did. 

 He states their period of incubation to be twenty-eight 



