ted by the city of refuge
provided for them at Walton, were a flock of twenty-four wild-geese, of
the large and beautiful species called the Canada or Cravat goose, (from
the conspicuous white patch on its black neck,) which unexpectedly
appeared on the lake one winter, and took up their permanent abode there,
occasionally making excursions to the other waters in the neighbourhood.
"In the breeding season, two or three pairs will remain here. The rest
take themselves off, and are seen no more till the return of autumn, when
they reappear without any addition to the flock or diminution of it. This
is much to be wondered at; and I would fain hazard a conjecture that the
young may possibly be captured in the place where they have been hatched,
and the pinioned to prevent escape. But, after all, this is mere
speculation. We know nothing of the habits of our birds of passage when
they are absent from us; and we cannot account how it comes to pass that
the birds just mentioned invariably return to this country without any
perceptible increase of numbers; or, if the original birds die or are
destroyed, why it is that the successors arrive here in the same numbers
as their predecessors." This remark has before been made in the case of
swallows and other migratory birds, the numbers of which returning each
spring, in localities where they can be accurately observed and counted,
has always been found to be he same as that which arrived the preceding
year, though the flock which departed southward in autumn had been swollen
by the young broods accompanying their parents. Thus Gilbert White
ascertained that at Selborne the number of swifts was invariably eleven
pair; and, as in some instances when old birds have been caught and
marked, they have been found to return during several succeeding years,
this fact would seem to justify the inference that the young birds, after
quitting the country of their birth, do not, for at least a year or two,
join in the annual migration of their species.

By waylaying the stay-at-home geese at the time when the moult of the
wing-quills disabled them for flight, Mr Waterton succeeded in securing
and pinioning six of them, thus preventing their future departure. They
subsequently received an accession to their party in two Bernacle ganders,
which Mr Waterton had brought over from Rotterdam, and the partners of
which had died soon after their arrival, perhaps from the act of pinioning
them; though Mr