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 



