ANSER ERTTHROPUS 91 



ago, a friend of mine, who knew how very keen I was on ornith- 

 ology, informed me with great glee that he had been having a feed 

 on some " hill ptarmigan." He described a bird of that family 

 most nainutely, and I thought he must have got hold of something 

 really good, and offered fabulous prices to any Naga who would 

 produce some of these birds for my inspection. Of course they 

 never came, but eventually my friend, seeing me handling some 

 imperial pigeons, suddenly exclaimed : " Why, there are the hill 

 ptarmigan ! " I regret to say that his description, as given me, 

 contained only two points which referred to the pigeon, i.e., their 

 colour and their feathered toes, the rest was the result of a fertile 

 imagination, a desire to please, and the knowledge, he being a good 

 sportsman, of what a hill ptarmigan sliould look like. 



The same man ate with relish some fine specimens of the 

 Naga hill-partridge (Arboricola rufigularis), and left me the wings 

 and a few feathers to weep over. However, jiartridges and ptar- 

 migan are not geese, and I must stray no further. 



The other recorded Indian specimens are: two shot and one 

 other seen by Captain Irby in Oudh ; others seen. Some, Hume 

 does not say how many, were obtained by Mr. A. Anderson near 

 Hardai in Oadh, and at Futtepur in the North-west Provinces. One 

 procured by Dr. Bonavia near Lucknow ; and three shot by Mr. 

 Chili, some thirty miles south of Delhi. Three were obtained by 

 Mr. Frank Finn (a male and two females), from a bird-dealer in 

 the provision-bazaar in Calcutta, said to have come from some- 

 where near Rawal-Pindi. One was shot by Mr. E. Johnston, at 

 Sookerating, Lakhimpur, Assam, in October, 1903. One recorded 

 from near Nowshera by Mr. J. Wignall, shot on the Kabul river 

 on the •2.Hrd October, 1910. Finally, Mr. Plinston records seeing 

 four and shooting one on the Gogra, near Fyzabad, on the -Idi-d 

 February, 1911. 



Nidification. — This little goose breeds in Lapland and ividr 

 Alpheraky) " it breeds in the Kaninzk Peninsula, and probably 

 throughout the whole tundra of the northern coast-line of Siberia." 

 Its breeding-grounds in Lapland are close to the perpetual ice, 

 yet, in spite of this, it is a comparatively early breeder, as 

 Middendorff took the young in down as early as the 23rd .June, 



