250 AMERICAK GAME BIED SHOOTING. 



tached to grassy patches near sti'eams, and tidewater 

 marshes, as they may be found in such places when they 

 are scarce on the plains. 



The snow goose, or white-brant (Anser hyperbo?'eus), 

 covers the West in such vast flocks that millions may be 

 found there during the autumn and spring. They are 

 not welcome, however, as they are very destructive to 

 crops, and eat up everything in the form of a cereal they 

 can find. The result is, that farmers wage war on them 

 with batteries, shot guns, and strychnine, and decimate 

 them by the thousands. Market hunters, pot-hunters, 

 and punters also prey upon them night and day, and 

 slaughter them by every device known to man; yet their 

 numbers do not apparently diminish in the AVest, for 

 they arrive in hordes as regularly as the migratory sea- 

 son comes round. This species may be readily distin- 

 guished from its congeners by its pure-white color; its 

 red legs and bill, and silvery-bluish primary quills. It 

 is readily susceptible to domestication, as several instances 

 are known in which it alighted to the barn-yard geese, 

 and remained with them, notwithstanding the numer- 

 ous calls it had from its wild congeners to rejoin them. 

 A man may ride up to a flock of these geese in re- 

 gions where they have not been pursued much, and 

 shoot them down, or even knock them over with a stout 

 stick. It is no uncommon thing to bag from forty to 

 seventy in a day by stalking them behind docile oxen or 

 horses; and the number that can be killed on the sand 

 bars at night can only be estimated. 



The horned wavy {A. rossii), which is a miniature copy 

 of the preceding species, is very common m parts of 

 British America, and is slaughtered in large numbers on 

 the streams and tarns scattered throughout the Saskatch- 

 awan region. It is not much larger than a canvas -back 

 duck, as it has only a length of twenty-four inches, but 

 what it lacks in size it atones for in quality of flesh. 



