BRITISH BIRDS, 293 
mary quills are white, the webs grey, and the tips 
black: the fecondaries black, edged with white: 
the breaft and belly are croffed and clouded with 
dulky and aih on a whitilh ground ; and the tail- 
coverts and vent are of a fnowy whitenefs : the 
middle feathers of the tail are dufky, tipped with 
white ; thofe adjoining more deeply tipped, and the 
exterior ones nearly all white : legs pale red. 
This fpecies is common in this country, and al- 
though large flocks of them, well known to the cu- 
rious, in all the various Ihapes which they aflume 
in their flight, * are feen regularly migrating fouth- 
ward in the autumn, and northward in the fpring, f 
* The elevated and marfhalled flight of the Wild Geefc 
feems di6lated by geometrical inftindl — fhaped like a wedge, 
they cut the air with lefs individual exertion ; and it is conjec- 
tured, that the change of its form from an inverted V, an A, 
an L, or a ftraight line, is occafioned by the leader of the van’s 
quitting his poll at the point of the angle through fatigue, drop- 
ping into the rear, and leaving his place to be occupied by ano- 
ther. 
f A gentleman in the county of Durham, one morning in 
the month of April, obferved a flock of Wild Geefe going 
northward, in the line of two objedls whofe diftance he knew 
to be four miles ; he found by his watch the exa6t time they 
were in flying this diftance ; from which he calculated, that if 
they continued to fly at the fame rate for twelve hours, they 
would be at the Orkneys by fun-fet, which is twenty-five miles 
an hour. But it is not probable that thefe birds ever migrate 
from the fens in Cambridgeftiire, &c. to the Orkneys, or other 
