ANSER ERYTHROPUS. Bhs 
ANSER ERYTHROPUS (Linneus). 
LITTLE WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. 
O: W. tab. N. 
The White-fronted Goose is found in many places in the neigh- 
bourhood of the mountains. It breeds in company, a good many 
pairs being found in the same flat moor or valley. They fly over an 
intruder with loud cries of alarm, from which the Finns derive their 
name for the bird [Ailju-hanhi], but neither these nor the noise the 
White-fronted Goose makes at any other time seem to me much 
like laughing, to which it is compared in North America. When 
the Lapps are moving their herds, often of many hundred head of 
deer, if they happen to spread themselves over a valley occupied by 
the Geese, the flight of the birds soon betrays the situation of each 
nest. In this way, when last spring I went to look for them, I found 
the ground thoroughly beaten over before me, and it was with some 
difficulty I obtained a single nest. There were six eggs in it, one of 
which is in the hands of Mr. Alfred Newton for you to draw from 
if you please. 
[This also was written to Mr. Hewitson from Muoniovara on the 2nd of 
February, 1855, when I feel sure that no suspicion had crossed Mr. Wolley’s 
mind as to the subject of his notes not being the true Anser albifrons. But 
not very long after he came to hear of this small form of White-fronted Goose, 
described and figured by Naumann (Naturgesch. der Vég. Deutschl. xi. 
p- 365, tab. 290) in 1842 as Anser minutus, and also discovered, as stated in 
his Sale Catalogue for 1857, that it had been described in 1767 by Gunner 
in his notes to Leem’s ‘De Lapponibus Finmarchize Commentatio’ (p. 264) 
and there named Anser finmarchicus. But Gunner also identified it with the 
Anas erythropus of Linneeus, 1761 (Fauna Suecica, ed. 2, p. 41), the Fj/ellgas 
of the West Bothnians, and since much confusion had long existed as to what 
that bird was, I thought it expedient to bring the facts—which had so far 
been adduced only in Mr. Wolley’s Sale Catalogue—before the Zoological 
Society, not merely in justice to him, but also because the matter seemed one of 
general interest. I accordingly did this on the 26th of June, 1860, and my 
remarks will be found in the Society’s ‘Proceedings’ fcr that yeer 
(pp. 339-341; reprinted ‘ Ibis,’ 1860, p. 406, and Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 2, 
ii. p. 452). All I need say here is that I then believed the name Av/lio-hanhit, 
as Mr. Wolley usually wrote it, was a dialectic form of Kallio-hanhi— 
literally ‘‘ Mountain-Goose,” and therefore an exact rendering of the Swedish 
name. But I find since, from Dr. Palmén (Finlands Foglar, ii. p. 344) and 
others, that the Finnish name is really Av/ju-hanhi, and has its origin from 
the bird’s noisy cry—as, indeed, Mr. Wolley had before stated. 
PART IV. et 
