THE GREY LAG-GOOSE. 61 
Geese of this species tame very readily, and are often kept in 
captivity by natives. A broken-winged bird will be on good 
terms with you and the whole poultry yard within a fortnight 
after its capture. They stand the hot weather perfectly, and 
constantly breed and lay in captivity, but the young, though 
often hatched, rarely, if ever, reach maturity. 
This species is probably the original stock from which most 
of the domestic Geese of Europe, as also some of our tame Geese 
in Northern India, have descended ; but in other parts of India 
the domestic Geese appear to have been derived either entirely 
from the Northern and Eastern Asiatic Goose, A. cygnozdes, (no 
wild specimen of which has as yet been recorded within our 
limits, though I suspect its occurrence in North-east Assam), or 
to be, as Blyth says, a prolific hybrid between the derivatives of 
the two species. Certainly in the Calcutta market I have’ seen 
some birds that, but for a somewhat coarser and paunchier look, 
could not have been distinguished from wild A. cygnozdes. 
Some Wild Geese are very good eating, some quite unfit for 
the table. As I remarked in the case of the Common Crane, much 
depends upon how they have been living for six weeks or two 
months previous to being shot. Birds recently arrived from 
northern climes are, as a rule, not worth cooking ; even fat grain- 
fed birds that have been spending their days in marshes and 
broads are often very indifferent. Again, even grain-fed birds 
that have been spending their days on the banks of some pure 
river, like the Chambal, are not always equally good. It is well to 
select for yourself, when distributing the day’s spoils to the camp 
followers, the birds of the year, weighing 6lbs. or so, and all 
white underneath, the old, heavy ones much marked below, 
though fat and well flavoured are too often tough and hard. As 
a fule, under like conditions, the Barred-headed or Indian Goose 
is better eating than the Grey Lag. 
Ipo not think that this species breeds within our limits. 
Adams, no doubt, in one of his papers says that it breeds on the 
Ladakh Lakes, but I have never seen it there, and in another 
paper he says it is the Barred-headed Goose (of which thousands 
do breed on these lakes) and the White-fronted Goose, (which, 
however, I have never seen there) that breed in Ladakh. 
In more northern regions, where they do breed, Dresser tells us 
that “ the nest is placed on the ground, and israther loosely con- 
structed of grass, dried flags, &c., &c., is tolerably well shaped ; 
but soon after the eggs are deposited, becomes trampled down 
out of shape. It is without any true lining until the eggs are 
deposited, when the female plucks down off her breast to cover 
the eggs, until her breast is almost denuded of its soft covering. 
When the nest is well cushioned with down, it is a tolerably sure 
sign that incubation has commenced ; and as she sits she keeps 
continually plucking and adding down to what is already there 
