619 



BERNICLA. BERNICLE GOOSE. 



The Bernicles, or " Tree Geese," as they have been 

 named from a foolish notion, long entertained by the learned 

 and not yet entirely renounced by the illiterate, of their 

 being produced from a kind of shells adhering to trees or 

 wood floating in the sea, differ little from the true Geese, 

 unless in having the head smaller, the bill short and more 

 conical, the feathers of the neck not arranged into grooves 

 and ridges, those of the breast much larger, and in the pre- 

 dominance of black in their plumage, bills, and feet. From 

 Anser brachyrhynchus to Bernicla leucopsis, the transition 

 as to form in the head and bill is perhaps slight ; but so it 

 is from the genus Anser to several other genera, and, ac- 

 cording to the system of subdivision now generally adopted, 

 we can hardly avoid separating the Bernicles from the Geese, 

 they being, I think, as different from them as the smaller 

 Gulls are from the larger, or Budytes from Motacilla. 



The body is full, ovate, of nearly equal height and 

 breadth ; the neck long and slender ; the head small, oblong, 

 compressed. 



Bill much shorter than the head, moderately stout, 

 straight, subcorneal, higher than broad at the base, narrowed 

 toward the end, where its breadth does not exceed its height ; 

 upper mandible with the lateral and superior basal margins 

 angular, the ridge broad and flattened for a short space at 

 the base, then convex, the dorsal line declinate and straight 

 to the unguis, which is round or broadly obovate, very 

 convex and much decurved, with a thin but strong edge, 

 the sides sloping and convex, the nasal space elliptical from 

 near the base to the middle, covered by the soft membrane 

 of the bill; the edges soft, straight, denticulate with the 

 rounded outer ends of the lamellae, which are scarcely 



