138 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GOOSE 



In England we rarely see bean geese in gaggles of 

 more than twenty or so ; usually a gaggle of these 

 birds runs only to from half a dozen to a dozen. I 

 have found it, in the wild-fowling districts with which 

 I am familiar, nearly always a correct assumption that 

 when one sees in the distance a skein numbering 

 over twenty, the birds will be found to be pink-footed 

 geese and not bean. By a close observer, who knows 

 both birds well, they can, when on the wing, be dis- 

 tinguished at some considerable distance, the flight of 

 the pink-footed goose being appreciably brisker and 

 less heavy than that of the other. 



It is a curious fact that not till between sixty and 

 seventy years ago did ornithology discover the dis- 

 tinction between the pink-footed goose and the bean ; 

 until this comparatively recent date every goose with 

 a black bean to its beak was regarded by naturalists 

 as a bean goose. Thirteen years after the foundation 

 (1826) of the Zoological Society of London, a 

 member at one of the Society's meetings read a 

 paper in which it was claimed, for the first time in 

 the history .of English ornithology, that the pink- 

 footed goose must be regarded as distinct in species 

 from the bean goose. The claim was recognised as 

 valid by the zoological world, and he who made the 

 discovery (Mr. Bartlett) named his goose Phcenicopus. 



