WIIITE-FKONTED GOOSE 67 



and the size niucli siualler as a rule, larfje specimens weighing 

 little over five pounds. The bea^v is also smaller in proportion, 

 measuring only two inches, while the grey-lag's is two and a 

 half to three. 



The white front, when fully developed in adult birds, is in 

 the form of a broad band across the forehead and bordering 

 the base of the beak ; in adult birds also the belly has transverse 

 black markings, often so pronounced that this part is practically 

 all black. 



The white-fronted goose is with ns a rare winter visitor, but 

 may turn up anywhere in our northern territories, from Sind to 

 Burma. It is met with by itself, not along with other geese, 

 although only found singly or in twos and threes. Three, for 

 instance, was the number observed and shot by Hume on his 

 first record of the species in November, 1874; these birds were 

 shot on the Jhelum, and one of them, which was only wounded, 

 led him a literal wild-goose chase before being secured, twice 

 rising and flying off strongly for a long distance before he finally 

 got it, to the great disgust of his men, who, as he says, " were 

 tired of plodding through the loose sand ; all objected to going 

 further after this goose. In the first place they declared he had 

 flown away altogether out of sight ; in the second place they 

 said I might have killed a dozen geese during the time I had 

 wasted over this one wounded bird, which was, moreover, a very 

 small one. There was almost a mutiny, but I had marked the 

 bird precisely and insisted on going up to the spot," when the 

 deplorable disregard for science exhibited by these benighted 

 natives was punished by the goose's opportune appearance 

 just as it was despaired of even by their master. 



These specimens proved to have " fed entirely on some 

 species of wild rice, and on tender green shoots of some grass 

 or grain " — the ordinary food of geese, in fact. Indeed, there is 

 nothing special about the habits of this species to record, though 

 its cry is rather different from that of the grey goose, being often 

 compared to laughter ; in fact, laughing goose is a well-known 

 name for it. AVhen in India it has usually been found to 

 frequent rivers. It ranges all across the Northern Hemisphere 

 in high latitudes, though the American birds, which are larger 



