of the Waterfowl of South America. 483 



way of shooting to diminish their numbers, as the birds 

 after a few shots became so wild that they rould no longer 

 be approached ; the old birds are not very much molested 

 for the present. The nests and the young are, however, 

 destroyed in a most disgraceful way. 



The birds are residents in Tierra del Fuego, but every- 

 thing about their life-history is, apparently, not known. 

 For instance, people there told me that these birds had 

 never been found moulting and unable to fly. 



This, of course, is an error, as semi-domesticated Geese of 

 this species moult their flight-feathers exactly like other 

 Waterfowl {Anseranas semipalmata excepted, which moults 

 its flight-feathers like an Ibis and can always fly). 



This belief only makes it likely that at the critical time 

 the birds wander away to some unknown or uninhabited 

 part of Tierra del Fuego, or its adjacent islands, wliere they 

 can moult in peace and security. This is probably the only 

 thing that preserves the species, as the settlers would cer- 

 tainly destroy them in great numbers if they moulted in 

 inhabited or accessible country. 



The lagoons near Jente Grande, or some of them, are 

 very shallow in some parts, and it was a surprising sight to 

 see a number of these Geese quietly standing on one leg, 

 without wetting their underside, in the midst of a large 

 expanse of water, which, naturally, one would expect to have 

 been much deeper. 



Chloephaga magellanica. 



Amongst the countless numbers of Chloephaga inornata 

 which I saw in Tierra del Fuego, I have only seen very few 

 white-breasted birds belonging to the allied C. magellanica 

 of the Falklands. They were probably stragglers that had 

 lost themselves amongst the flocks of C. inornata. I did not 

 see single flocks, however small, of these birds alone. 



The young of C. magellanica in their first plumage have 

 generally slightly barred or spotted undersides. After the 

 first moult they acquire the white underparts. The white. 



