LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 171 



the market, but gangs of men have been paid to destroy tliem where they were 

 feeding in grain fields. Until 1915 they were afforded no protection whatever, 

 and as a natural result their ranks have been so often decimated that, com- 

 paratively speaking, only a remnant now remains. 



In former years, when passing through the Sacramento or San Joaquin Val- 

 leys by train, great flocks of white geose, in company with other, dark-colored 

 species, were often to be seen sitting on the grain fields or pasture lands almost 

 within gunshot of the cars. The days are past and gone when a man has to 

 drive geese from his grain field. In many places where formerly the ground 

 was so covered with white geese as to look snowclad, not a single goose 

 is now to be observed feeding and but few flying overhead, fn spite of the 

 extreme shyness and watchfulness of these geese, the ingenuity of the hun- 

 ter and the increased efficiency of firearms has so far overbalanced the natural 

 protection thus afforded that the birds are now actually threatened with extinc- 

 tion. Unless the protection now furnished proves adequate in the very near 

 future, this State, which at one time appeared to have an inexhaustil)le supply 

 of geese, will have entirely lost this valuable game resource. 



That snow geese are abundant in winter in certain parts of Texas 

 is well illustrated b}^ the followino; note made by Herbert W. Brandt 

 in Kleberg County : 



On March 23, 1919, we went up to the Laureless Ranch headquarters and got 

 Mr. Cody, the foreman, to go for a ride with us. He showed us a new road 

 and took us to Laguna Larga, a great marshy tract G miles long in the plains. 

 The water is not deep and grass grows up through it all over, and there are a 

 few small patches of tules or cat-tails, but it all dries up if the summer is 

 dry. As we approached it looked as if it was covered with snow, but it proved 

 to be thousands upon thousands of snow geese and other wild geese. Here is 

 their winter home, coming into the great pastures at night to feed on the 

 abundant grass. Last year for the first time known a couple of large flocks 

 remained the entire summer. It was the most wonderful sight in bird life 

 I ever saw, and it will never be forgotten, as cloud after cloud of white and 

 black l)irds took to wing and then settled down in a distant part of the marsh. 



Mr. Kleberg told us that the geese we saw were just a few left from the 

 great winter flocks, most of them having now departed for the northland. 

 He has seen 500 acres of solid geese, he said, just one snow bank. He hunts 

 them by taking his big Packard car and runs toward them on the prairies at 

 60 miles an hour. The wind is always blowing here and the geese must rise 

 and fly against it ; as they are overtaken they work the pump shotguns on 

 them. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Breeding range. — Arctic America, along the coast from northern 

 Alaska (Point Barrow) eastward to Hudson Bay (Southampton 

 Island) and Baffin T.and, and on Arctic lands and islands north of 

 North America. Plas been seen in summer on the Arctic coast of 

 northeastern Siberia (Tchuktchen Peninsula), where it probably 

 breeds. It may breed farther west in Siberia. 



Winter range. — Includes the whole of temperate North America 

 from the Atlantic to the Pacific, rare or .straggling, mainly as a 

 migrant, on the Atlantic coast, uncommon east of the Mississippi 



