273 
Wild Geese . 
CHAPTER XII. 
Wild Geese were very abundant in several counties, 
and, according to Camden, were the source 
of much profit to the native population. In 
his description of the country near Haddington, in Scot¬ 
land, Camden exclaims:— 
“ What a. multitude of sea foules, and especially of those geese 
which they call scoutes and soland geese flocke hither at their times, 
for, by report, their number is such, that in a cleere day they take 
away the sunnes light; what a sort of fishes they bring, for, as the 
speech goeth, a hundred garison souldiours that here lay for the 
defense of the place fed upon no other meat but the fresh fish that 
they brought in; what a quantity of little twigges they get together 
for the building of their nests, so that by their means the inhabitants 
are abundantly provided of fewell for tlieir fire ; what a mighty game 
groweth by their fethers and oyle: the report thereof is so incredible, 
that no man scarcely would beleeve it, but he that had seene it.” 
The same authority relates the strange effect which 
certain portions of ground had on these birds, more 
especially in the neighbourhood of the Abbey of St. 
Hilda, near Whitby, in Yorkshire. To the influence of 
the abbess, he writes— 
“ they ascribe, that those wilde geese, which in wintertime flie by 
flockes unto pooles and rivers that are not frozen over, in the south 
partes; whiles they flie over certaine fields neere adjoyning, soudainely 
fall downe to the ground, to the exceeding great admiration of all men : 
a thing that I would not have related, had I not heard it from very 
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