GOOSE 375 



the Aleutian Islands, though straying to the continent in winter, 

 and may be recognized by the white edging of its remiges. 



The southern portions of the New World are inhabited by about 

 half-a-dozen species of Geese, akin to the foregoing, but separated 

 as the genus Chloephaga. The most noticeable of them are the 

 Eock- or Kelp -Goose, C. antardka, and the Upland -Goose, C. 

 magellanica. In both of these the sexes are totally unlike in colour, 

 the male being nearly white, while the female is of a mottled 

 brown, but in others a greater similarity obtains.^ Very nearly 

 allied to the birds of this group, if indeed that can be justifiably 

 separated, comes one which belongs to the northern hemisphere, 

 and is common to the Old World as well as the New. It contains 

 the Geese which have received the common names of Bernacle or 

 Brant, and the scientific appellations of Bernida and Branta — for 

 the use of either of which much may be said by nomenclaturists. 

 All the species of this section are distinguished by their general 

 dark sooty coloui', relieved in some by white of greater or less 

 purity, and by way of distinction from the members of the genus 

 Anser, which are known as Grey Geese, are frequently called by 

 fowlers Black Geese. Of these, the best- known both in Europe and 

 North America is the Brant-Goose — the Anas bernida of Linnaeus, 

 and the B. torquata of many modern writers — a truly marine bird, 

 seldom (in Europe at least) quitting salt water, and coming south- 

 ward in vast flocks towards autumn, frequenting bays and estuaries 

 on our coasts, where it lives chiefly on sea-grass [Zostera marititna). 

 It is known to breed in Spitsbergen and in Greenland. A form 

 which is by some ornithologists deemed a good species, and called 

 by them B. nigricans, occurs chiefly on the Pacific coast of North 

 America. In it the black of the neck, which in the common Brant 

 terminates just above the breast, extends over most of the lower 

 parts. The true Bernacle-Goose,^ the B. leucopsis of most authors, 

 is only a casual visitor to North America, but is said to breed in 

 Iceland, and occasionally in Norway. Its usual incunabula, how- 

 ever, still form one of the puzzles of the ornithologist, and the 

 difiiculty is not lessened by the fact that it will breed freely in 

 semi-captivity, while the Brant-Goose will not. From the latter 



^ See Sclater and Salvin, Proc. Zool. Society, 1876, pp.' 361-369. 



^ The old fable, perhaps still believed by the uneducated in some parts of the 

 world, of Bernacle- Geese being produced from the Barnacles {Lepadidae,) that 

 grow on timber exposed to salt-water, is not more absurd than many that in 

 darker ages had a gi-eat hold of the popular mind, and far less contemptible than 

 the conceited spirit in which many modern zoologists and botanists often treat 

 it. They forget that there are still adherents to the doctrine of spontaneous 

 generation, which seems to be hardly less extravagant than the notion of birds 

 growing from "worms," as they were then called. The mistake of our fore- 

 fathers is of course evident, but that is no reason for deriding their innocent 

 ignorance as some writers are fond of doing. 



