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quiet, outhouse, with plenty of dry straw, gravel, and fresh water, and are there to be supplied for a certain length of time, continued according to the weight desired to be laid on, with all the barley or oats they can eat. The kind of grain used depends upon custom or convenience, some advocating barley, others oats; a mixture might perhaps be the most effectual. Barley-meal and water is recommended by some feeders; but full-grown Geese that have not been habituated to the mixture when young, will occasionally refuse to eat it. Cooked potatoes in small quantities do no harm. A first-rate delicacy, though rather expensive, would be produced by following Penelope's system of feeding, and giving the birds upo ég údaros, or steeped wheat.

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The Goose is not only very early in its laying, but also very late. It often anticipates the spring in November, and afterwards, when spring really comes in March, it cannot resist its genial influence. The autumnal eggs afford useful employment to Turkies or Hens that choose to sit at unseasonable times: and the period of incubation, thirty days, is less tedious than that required for the eggs of China Geese or Musk Ducks. A dry, airy lean-to or shed, and the gleanings of a kitchen garden, are all that are needful to rear the young. Their great enemy will be the cramp, which may be kept off by making them sleep on dry straw, and turning them out with their mother for an hour or two every mild and open day. When winter Goslings are expected, a Michaelmas planting (not sowing) of lettuce and endive should be made; the latter will be found particularly serviceable, as also the tender parts of turnip tops. A living turf laid down in the outhouse and changed occasionally, will be relished. A little boiled rice daily assists their growth, with corn, of course, as soon as they can eat it. A rushlight burnt in a Goosehouse during the fifteen or sixteen hours of darkness in winter, has been successfully employed to induce the Goslings to eat. And when it is remembered that the candle costs the fraction of a penny, while an early green

Goose is worth from seven shillings to half-a-guinea, it will be seen that the expense is not thrown away. Almost all breeders of Goslings administer, by cramming, long half-dried pellets composed of raw egg and wheat flour; it is an old practice, but is unnecessary, except during

mid-winter.

We give Columella's directions for rearing :

"Atque is (anserculus) dum exiguus est, decem primis diebus pascitur in harâ clausus cum matre: postea cum serenitas permittit, producitur in prata, et ad piscinas. Cavendumque est, ne aculeis urticæ compungatur, aut esuriens mittatur in pascuum: sed ante concisis intubis, vel lactucæ foliis saturetur. Nam si adhuc parum firmus, et indigens ciborum pervenit in pascuum, fruticibus aut solidioribus herbis obluctatur ita pertinaciter, ut collum abrumpat."-Columella, lib. viii., chap. xiv.

"And the Gosling, while he is very little, is shut up in a pen for the first ten days, and fed along with his mother: afterwards, when the fine weather permits, he is led forth into the meadows, and to the fish-ponds. And care must be taken that he is neither stung by nettles, not sent fasting to the pasture, but has his appetite satisfied beforehand with chopped endive or lettuce leaves. For if he goes to pasture still weak and hungry, he tugs at the shrubs and more solid herbs so pertinaciously as to break his neck." The Roman school of poulterers were in great fear of nettles for their Goslings, and as a counterirritative remedy, it was proposed to place nettle-roots under the sitting Geese; but one would say that the nettles, not the Goslings, had the greatest reason for alarm.

Geese are slaughtered by being bled from the internal parts of the throat,—a slow and cruel method. They, as well as Ducks, should be let out to the pond a few hours before execution, where they will purify and arrange their feathers as neatly as if they were going to their wedding instead of to their death. Adult birds are almost exempt from disease.

When three-quarters grown, they occa

sionally, though not often, "go light," as the countrypeople call it, and waste and die like a person in a consumption. This usually happens only with birds that are shut up too closely to fat. The remedy is liberty and grass.

I have seen the shell of a Goose's egg that had contained three yolks. This, with many other remarkable lusus, is in the valuable collection of Mr. John Smith, librarian to the Great Yarmouth Public Library.

THE BERNICLE GOOSE.

"Aves quas vulgus Baumgänse, hoc est arborum anseres vocant, eo quod ex arboribus nasci dicuntur, a quibus stipiti et ramis dependent. Dicunt etiam aliquando ex putridis lignis hæc animalia in mari generari, et præcipue ex abietum putredine. Et hoc omnino absurdum est."Ortus Sanitatis.

"Birds which the vulgar call Baumgänse, that is, Tree Geese, because they are said to be produced on trees, from the trunk and branches of which they hang. They say also that these creatures are sometimes generated in the sea, from decayed planks, particularly firwood. And this is altogether absurd."

SEVERAL ornithological writers have lamented, with expressions of surprise, that so few of the larger water-birds have been domesticated, and made to afford us a ready supply of food, in return for their board and lodging. But it should be remembered that there are two parties to the proposed arrangement-the master and the slave. If the captive resolutely persists in saying, "You may bestow every care upon me, and lavish every comfort, but I will not be the parent of a race of slaves, although I may show a little personal thankfulness to yourself," the next move for us to make is to procure young that are ignorant of the fascinations of a wild life, and to endeavour to subdue, by kindness, their stubborn nature. If they remain indomitably independent, and refuse to yield, we are check-mated, and cannot proceed a step further. It is not in our power to increase the number of domesticable birds. "The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth," is a promise which will be undoubtedly fulfilled; and thus; as the dominion of Man over the earth daily and hourly extends itself, those creatures that refuse to enter into his train, will be crushed and perish beneath his advancing footsteps; for, "into your hand are they delivered. Every

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moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things."

The Bernicle Goose is one of those species in which the impulse of reproduction has at length overcome the sullenness of captivity; and it is a curious fact, that instances of their breeding have of late increased in frequency, and we may therefore hope will go on increasing. The young so reared should be pinioned at the wrist, as a precaution. The probability is, that they would stay at home contentedly, unpinioned, till hard weather came, when they would be tempted to leave their usual haunts in search of marshes, unfrozen springs, mud banks left by the tide, and the open sea, where they would be liable to be shot by sporting naturalists-a fate which has done more than anything else to check the propagation of interesting birds in England-or might be induced to join a flock of wild birds, instead of returning to their former quarters.

Here is a warning example. The pinioning of a brood of Egyptian Geese had been delayed too long; they could fly, and though they came to be fed as usual, would not suffer themselves to be caught. In the winter, during a hard frost, they flew down to the marshes a few miles distant. Their keeper happened to be on the road thither, and seeing them in the air overhead, called to them as usual. They knew his voice, wheeled about, hovered for a moment, and then pursued their course. Shortly afterwards they were shot by mistake for wild birds, by a person who must have been aware that there was a collection of water-fowl in the neighbourhood; in which, however, there are now only male Egyptian Geese, the mother of the brood having suffered the same fate. Similar unfortunate mistakes are frequent. Does the paragraph in the local newspaper about the "rare bird” shot by so and so, esquire, and the stuffed specimen in the smart glass case, compensate for the slaughter?

Broods of five, six, and seven Bernicle Geese have been reared; not an inconsiderable increase, if we only

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