236 THE AMERICAN WILD GOOSE. 



extensive range of grass and water ; so far all is as it 

 should be. But they are there generally associated with 

 other species of geese and water fowls, all being of a 

 sociable disposition, and forming one heterogeneous 

 flock. In the breeding season, they neither can agree 

 among themselves to differ seriously, nor yet live 

 together in peace ; the consequence is, that they inter- 

 rupt each other's love-making, keep up a constant 

 bickering, without coming to the decisive quarrels and 

 battles that would set all right; and in the end. we have 

 birds without mates, eggs unfertilised, and now- and then 

 a few monstrous hybrids, which, however much" some 

 curious persons may prize them, are as ugly as they are un- 

 natural, and by no means recompense by their rarity for 

 the absence of two or three broods of healthy legitimate 

 goslings.- Many writers speak highly of the half-bred 

 Canada goose. They are very large, it is true, and may 

 merit approbation on the table ; but with whatever other 

 species the cross is made, they are hideously dis- 

 pleasing. 



The facility with which the Canada goose, captured 

 wild, is tamed, while yet it retains a " trick of the old 

 nature," is well exemplified in a story related by Wilson, 

 on the authority of a correspondent for whose veracity 

 he avouches ; which story, he observes, is paralleled by 

 others of the same import. " Mr. Piatt, a respectable 

 farmer on Long Island, being out shooting in one of the 

 bays, which, in that part of the country, abound with 

 water fowl, wounded a wild goose. Being wing-tipped 

 and unable to fly, he caught it and brought it home 

 alive. It proved to be a female, and turning it into his 

 yard with a flock of tame geese, it soon became quite 

 tame and familiar, and in a little time its wounded wing 

 entirely healed. In the following spring, when the wild 



feese migrated to the northward, a flock passed over Mr. 

 'latt's barn yard, and just at that moment, their leader 

 happening to sound his bugle note, our goose* in whom 

 its new habits and enjoyments had not quite extinguished 

 the love of liberty, remembering the well-known sound, 

 spread its wings, moved in the air, joined the travellers, 

 and soon disappeared. In the succeeding autumn, the 



