254 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTIIfG. 



delicacy of flesh. Its legs, head, neck, and bill, are black, 

 a large triangular j^atch of white decorates the cheeks be- 

 hind the eyes, and there are a few whitish feathers on 

 the eyelids. The upper region is grayish-brown, with 

 paler edges; the anterior is lightish, with a tinge of pur- 

 plish-gray; the tail feathers, Avhich number eighteen, are 

 black, and the upper tail coverts white. It has a length 

 of about three feet and a half; the wing is eighteen inches, 

 and the tarsus nearly four niches long. It breeds in 

 almost all sections of the country north of the thirty-third 

 parallel, but its favorite nesting haunts seem to be the un- 

 trodden regions of the far north, as it is exceedingly com- 

 mon m Labrador, Newfoundland, and portions of Canada 

 proper, British Columbia, Alaska, aud the States and 

 Territories of the Pacific Slope. It is found as far south 

 as Texas in winter, and has been shot near the Mexican 

 border in California. I have seen several small flocks of 

 this species paradiug their goslings along the margins of 

 lakes and streams in Idaho, Montana, and contiguous Ter- 

 ritories, or swimming with them in the water when it was 

 smooth. If they were pursued on such occasions, they 

 fled, and left the young to take care of themselves, and 

 this the piping creatures attempted to do, by diving or 

 by fluttering along the surface at a rate of speed one 

 would not give them credit for. The goslings are half 

 grown by the middle of June, and as they are then highly 

 edible, large numbers are killed by whites and Indians. 

 The adults share their fate to a certain extent, for, owing 

 to their moulting, they cannot fly, and are therefore 

 easily knocked over with a club, an arrow, or a shot-gun. 

 Thousands are shot every day from September to 

 March by the whites, and hundreds of thousands meet 

 their death at the hands of the Indians during the sum- 

 mer months, when they are moulting. Yet they do not 

 seem to decrease in numbers in tlie Far West, and are as 

 destructive as ever to crops in some portions of the coun- 



