l "goose train" of from fifteen to
forty cars is received daily in Berlin from Russia. It would seem that
the goose that lays the golden egg has emigrated to Muscovy. Buffon
says that the introduction of the Virginia turkey into Europe drove
the goose off the tables of all civilized peoples.]

[Footnote 187: Columella (VIII, 14) repeats this myth, but Aristotle
(_H.A._ V, 2, 9) says that geese bathe _after_ breeding. Buffon gives
a Gallic touch, "ces oiseaux preludent aux actes de l'amour en allant
d'abord s'egayer dans l'eau."]

[Footnote 188: Reading _seris_. It is the _Cichorium endivia_ of
Linnaeus. Cf. Pliny (_H.N._ XX, 32.)]

[Footnote 189: Varro does not mention it, but the Romans knew and prized
_pate de foie gras_ under the name _ficatum_, which indicates that
they produced it by cramming their geese with a diet of figs. Cf.
Horace's verse "pinguibus et ficis pastum iecur anseris albi."

In Toulouse, whence now comes the best of this dainty of the epicure,
the geese are crammed daily with a dough of corn meal mixed with the
oil of poppies, fed through a tin funnel, which is introduced into the
esophagus of the unhappy bird. At the end of a month the stertorous
breathing of the victim proclaims the time of sacrifice to Apicius.
The liver is expected to weigh a kilogram, (say two pounds), while
at least two kilograms of fat are saved in addition, to garnish the
family _plat_ of vegetables during the remainder of the year.]

[Footnote 190: Reading _foeles_, which Keller, in his account of the
fauna of ancient Italy in the Cambridge _Companion to Latin Studies_,
identifies with _Martes vulgaris_. Sir Anthony Fitzherbert calls them
fullymartes. It does not appear that the Romans had in Varro's time
brought from Egypt our household cat, _F. maniculata_. They used
weasels and tame snakes for catching mice.]

[Footnote 191: Darwin (_Animals and Plants_, I, 8) cites this passage
and argues that Varro's advice to cover the duck yard with netting to
keep the ducks from flying out is evidence that in Varro's time ducks
were not entirely domesticated, and hence that the modern domestic
duck is the same species as the wild duck. It may be noted, however,
that Varro gives the same advice about netting the chicken yard,
having said that chickens had been domesticated from the beginning of
time.]

[Footnote 192: The ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinii is now known
as Corneto. The wild sheep which Lippinus there kept in h