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 
Rock- or Kelp-Goose, C. antarctica, 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 Bernicla 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 colour, 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 bernicla of Linneus, 
and the B. torqguata 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 maritima). 
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 5. lewcopsis of most authors, 
is only a casual visitor to North America, but is said to breed in 
Iceland, and occasionally in Norway. Its usual incwnabula, how- 
ever, still form one of the puzzles of the ornithologist, and the 
difficulty is not lessened by the fact that it will breed freely in 
semi-captivity, while the Brant-Goose will not. From the latter 
1 See Sclater and Salvin, Proc. Zool. Society, 1876, pp. 361-369. 
2 The old fable, perhaps still believed by the uneducated in some parts of the 
world, of Bernacle-Geese being produced from the Bernacles (Lepadidw) that 
grow on timber exposed to salt-water, is not more absurd than many that in 
darker ages had a great 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. 
