THE BEAN GOOSE. 
37 
Island) return for October states, that on the night of the lltli 
they had light airs of wind with hazy weather, when nine dozen 
of larks, snipes, and woodcocks were caught fluttering about the 
lantern; and had more assistance been at hand, double that num- 
ber might have been secured.”* 
The following note of the species of birds which had been 
killed at various times by flying against the lighthouse on Tory 
Island (off the northern coast of Donegal) and preserved by 
Mrs. Bailey there, was kindly communicated by Mr. G. C. Hynd- 
man, who saw the specimens in August 1845 : — Fieldfare, red- 
wing, house-marten (killed in Dec. 1844), dunlin? ringed plover, 
oyster-catcher, woodcock, landrail, wigeon, puffin, and stormy petrel. 
The wigeon struck the copper dome above the light with such 
force that the sound was mistaken for that of a cannon, as 
a signal of distress, and the lighthouse-keeper actually sallied 
out to ascertain the state of the case. The wigeon, of course, was 
killed. Tennyson, in his last poem, u The Princess,” describes 
the heroine, on one occasion, as 
“Fixt like a beacon-tower, above the waves 
Of tempest, when the crimson rolling eye 
Glares ruin, and the wild sea- birds on the light 
Dash themselves dead.” — (p. 89, first edit.) 
A friend, when woodcock-shooting for two days in December, 
1819, at Mountainstown demesne, near Navan, county Meath, 
saw wild geese, in flocks of from ten to twenty, during the time; 
occasionally they came very near, though keeping out of range of 
gun-shot : the firing at the woodcocks roused these geese from the 
neighbouring bogs, which they frequent throughout the winter. 
Mr. G. Jackson (gamekeeper) informs me that “ Wild geese 
are very plentiful in all the counties of Connaught, where they 
generally appear at the full of the moon after the middle of 
October, and leave at the full of the moon in April. When 
departing they generally take their flight in the after part of the 
day, and bend their course towards the nearest point of sea-coast, 
* Belfast Comm. Chronicle, Dec. 16, 1839. 
