They were lying in a slight depression without a trace of lining. The 
same ruse misled us several times; but on every occasion the 
parent betrayed her presence by a startled outcry and hasty departure 
soon after we had passed her and our backs were presented. They 
usually flew to a considerable distance, and showed little anxiety over 
our visit to the nests. The nests I examined usually contained from 
three to five eggs, but the full complement ranged up to eight. When 
first laid the eggs are pure white, but soon become soiled. They 
vary in shape from elongated oval to slightly pyriform, and are indis¬ 
tinguishable in size and shape from those of the white-fronted goose. 
As the egg-laying approaches completion, the parent lines the de¬ 
pression in the ground with a soft, warm, bed of fine grass, leaves, 
and feathers from her own breast. The males were rarely seen near 
the nests, but usually gathered about the feeding-grounds with others 
of their kind, where they were joined now and then by their mates. 
The young are hatched in late June or early July, and are led 
about by both parents until, in the last weeks of July, or the first of 
August, the old birds molt their quill-feathers, and, like the still 
unfledged young, become extremely helpless. At this time, myriads 
of other geese are in the same condition; and the Eskimos made a 
practice of setting up long lines of strong fish-nets on the tundras 
to form pound-traps, or enclosures with wide wings leading to them, 
into which thousands were driven and killed for food. The slaughter 
in this way was very great, for the young were killed at the same 
time and thrown away in order to get them out of the way of the 
next drive. The Eskimos of this region also gather large numbers 
of eggs of the breeding water-fowl for food; and, this practice, with 
the demand for eggs at the mining-camps, has constituted a serious 
menace to the existence of these and other water-fowl. 
Fortunately, in 1909, President Roosevelt made a bird-reserva¬ 
tion covering the delta of the Yukon and the tundra to the southward, 
which includes the main breeding-ground of the emperor goose, and 
thus took a long step toward perpetuating this fine bird. 
61 
