166. Suppose a man get three stalls of bees in a year. Six bushels of wheat give him bread for an _eighth part of the year_. Scarcely any thing is a greater misfortune than _shiftlessness_. It is an evil little short of the loss of eyes or of limbs.
167. They can be kept to advantage only where there are _green commons_, and there they are easily kept; live to a very great age; and are amongst the hardiest animals in the world. If _well kept_, a goose will lay a hundred eggs in a year. The French put their eggs under large hens of common fowls, to each of which they give four or five eggs; or under turkies, to which they give nine or ten goose-eggs. If the goose herself sit, she must be well and _regularly fed_, at, or near to, her nest. When the young ones are hatched, they should be kept in a warm place for about four days, and fed on barley-meal, mixed, if possible, with milk; and then they will begin to _graze_. Water for them, or for the old ones to _swim_ in, is by no means _necessary_, nor, perhaps, ever even _useful_. Or, how is it, that you see such fine flocks of fine geese all over Long Island (in America) where there is scarcely such a thing as a pond or a run of water?