IN FEATHERS AND FUR. 
117 
A SLANDERED BIRD. 
I would like to know — if anybody can tell me— why the 
Goose is always sneered at and abused. I think he is very digni- 
fied, and wise as any bird. 
This picture is not the common domestic Goose, it is called 
the Bernacle Goose, and curious stories were believed of its origin 
in old times. It was thought to be produced from a Barnacle shell, 
and so strongly did people believe it, that they had pictures to show 
its various stages from a shell to a Goose. I think the people were 
the Geese that time — don't you? 
But it isn't about this wild Goose that I want to tell you, nor 
about any of the many varieties of wild Geese. I want to tell you 
about the domestic Goose. It is a poor return for the long service 
of this bird that we should say "silly as a Goose." It has freely 
given its eggs, and even its very flesh for our tables, for I don't 
know how manv hundred years, and yet we slander it. Not con- 
tented with baking, roasting, and stuffing him, not satisfied with 
stealing his feathers every year to stuff our pillows, and his quills 
