Turkeys that are brought to market are less than eighteen months old; many are double that age. Nor are they the worse, provided the lady of the house be informed of the circumstance, and so enabled to leave a due interim between the killing and the cooking.

The hen Turkey, contrary to the statements of some writers, does now and then erect her tail and strut like the male, and that too without any diminution of her feminine virtues. The manners of the cock are not prepossessing; he is vain, ungallant, careless of his young, a bully though not always a coward, the most selfish creature in the poultry-yard except the Musk Drake, occasionally even ferocious to weaker birds, sometimes also apt to be seized with odd fancies that render him useless; from which the only moral that I can draw, is, when you are in possession of a quiet, handsome, and serviceable bird, do not greedily eat nor rashly part with him. Their supposed antipathy to the colour of red or scarlet I believe to be an unfounded. prejudice; or one about as well grounded as the alleged fear that a Lion entertains of a Cock. "That the Lion is afraid of a Cock, cannot endure the sight of him, yea, is terrified by his very crowing, hath been delivered and received by Ancients and Moderns with unanimous consent and approbation, and divers reasons sought and assigned for this antipathy: When as the thing itself is by experience found to be false."-Willughby, p. 155: a writer who, for the age in which he lived, is remarkably sceptical. The courtships of Turkies are conducted with a degree of indecorous publicity and protracted vehemence, very objectionable in so large a bird. They display less individual attachment to Man than most other poultry, though they have equally, or more, thrown themselves on the protection of the race of mankind. They are called stupid; but mark the intelligence and amiability displayed by every look and action of a hen with her young. And yet little real alteration of her former manner is apparent. The strut that seemed foolishly pompous, now strikes us as justly proud and

cautious; the eye in which only affectation was apparent, now glances with anxiety and beams with tenderness. The discordant voice has now an object in its call, and may be heard almost to whisper in subdued notes of gentle affection. Whether in the faithful wife whom we cherish as ourselves, or in the poor bird that we rear, admire, and kill, a higher charm and elevation is added by the exercise of those holy affections which the beneficent Creator of all has given us for our comfort.

THE CANADA GOOSE.

But

THE history of the Anser Canadensis, in a state of nature, and in captivity, has been so well and so fully written by the ablest Ornithologists, both of England and America, that for me to attempt giving complete details would be either to restate the same facts in less appropriate language, or to commit a wholesale plunder of conpilation upon the stores of preceding authors. although unwilling to be guilty of this kind of pillage, I must necessarily make some reference to the labours of others. The bird is far too important, in every respect, to be entirely omitted in the present series; and there are a few points respecting it which ought to be brought into more prominent notice. Our poultry books mostly call it a variety of the Common Goose. But it is no more a variety of Goose than the Swan is a variety of Goose. Cuvier seems to doubt whether it is a Goose at all, and says that it cannot be properly separated from the true Swans. Audubon kept some three years, and though the old birds refused to breed in confinement, their young, which he had captured together with them, did. He states their period of incubation to be twenty-eight days, which is a shorter time than one would have imagined. That circumstance alone, if correct, marks a wide distinction; and every statement of his, which I have had the opportunity of testing, has proved accurate. I suspect that at a future time our scientific naturalists will deem it advisable to institute several new genera, for the reception of various water-fowl, that are now huddled into one or two; particularly if they allow the diet and habits of the birds, as well as their external form, to influence the rules of classification.

Canada Geese eat worms and soft insects, as well as grass and aquatic plants, which the typical Geese never

do; with us they do not breed till they are at least two years old, and so far approach the Swan. Like the Swan, also, the male appears to be fit for reproduction earlier than the female. But Audubon says, "That this tardiness is not the case in the wild state, I feel pretty confident, for I have observed, having broods of their own, many individuals, which, by their size, the dullness of their plumage, and such other marks as are known to the practised ornithologist, I judged to be not more than fifteen or sixteen months old. I have therefore thought that in this, as in many other species, a long series of years is necessary for counteracting the original wild and free nature which has been given them; and indeed it seems probable that our attempts to domesticate many species of wild-fowls, which would prove useful to mankind, have often been abandoned in despair, when a few years more of constant care might have produced the desired effect." The Canada Goose, in spite of its original migratory_habits, which it appears in almost every case to forget in England, shows much more disposition for true domestication than the Swan, and may be maintained in perfect health with very limited opportunities of bathing.

The manner in which these birds are usually kept here is neither consistent with their natural habits, nor calculated to develope their usefulness and merit. They are mostly retained as ornaments to large parks, where there is an extensive range of grass and water so far all is as it should be. But they are there generally associated with other species of Geese and water-fowl, all being of a sociable disposition, and forming one heterogeneous flock. In the breeding season, they neither can agree among themselves to differ seriously, nor yet to live together in peace; the consequence is, that they interrupt each other's love-making, keep up a constant bickering, without coming to the decisive quarrels and battles that would set all right; and in the end we have birds without mates, eggs unfertilised, and now and then a few monstrous hybrids, which, however some curious persons

E

may prize them, are as ugly as they are unnatural, and by no means recompense by their rarity for the absence of two or three broods of healthy legitimate goslings. Many writers, Audubon amongst others, from whom one would have expected a more healthy taste, speaks highly of the half-bred Canada Goose. They are very large, it is true, and may merit approbation on the table; but with whatever other species the cross is made, they are hideously displeasing. An old-fashioned plan of sweeping chimneys was to tie the legs of a Goose, pull her up and down by a string, and let her dislodge the soot by the flapping of her wings. This sounds cruel, and is not humane. But is it more barbarous to send Goose down a chimney, than a child up it ? This by the way but all half-bred Canada Geese, that I have seen, look as if they had kindly undertaken to act as substitute for the poor little climbing boy or girl.

Not only are they suffered thus to herd with other varieties, but the broods of successive years are suffered to remain, and annoy, and encroach upon the privileges of their parents, which would be made all square by their natural migrations, till the park gets evidently overstocked to the most unpractised eye-it has really been so long before, and then a few surplus individuals are disposed of, mostly at an age and season when they are good for little except their feathers, if for them. This mode of mismanagement accounts for the low esteem in which the flesh of the Canada Goose is held in England. I never met with any one who had tasted it here, that did not pronounce it detestable; though a gentleman who had lived on it for weeks in Canada, still remembered it with relish. In one instance within my own knowledge, the extra stock were given to the poor, who could not or would not eat them. But it is impossible that the thousands of people who eagerly destroy the bird in its passage to and fro, can be mistaken in the opinion they have for years held of its value as an article of diet. Audubon gives the clue to our error; he says:-" The