314 NATATORES. 



stronger claims than the other birds of this proverbially 

 grave and sage genus.* 



THE BARNACLE GOOSE (Anser lerniclo). 



This species has the bill, the feet, the neck, the breast, and 

 also the quills and tail feathers, black : the head is white, 

 and so is the under part from the breast backwards, and the 

 upper parts mixed with white, grey, and black. The young 

 birds have the white on the head more or less dusky, and a 

 dusky band from the gape to the eye. It has sometimes 

 been confounded with the brent goose, which is also a black- 

 footed goose ; but the brent goose has the head wholly 

 black, and only a white patch on each side of the neck ; 

 whereas the forehead, cheeks, and chin, of the barnacle 

 goose are white. 



The barnacle goose is rather less in its dimensions than 

 the white-fronted goose, but it is about the same weight. It 

 is one of those birds which sometimes arrive in vast numbers 

 upon our shores, driven by storms, which, though severe in 

 other places, are barely if at all felt by us. The birds, con- 

 sequently, appear to come without any obvious cause, and 

 they therefore, in the earliest ages, and before the manners 

 and migrations of birds were so well understood as they are 

 now, were naturally enough, though not in our estimation 



* This is the Anser albifrons of Bechstein. We must here advert to 

 another species of goose, closely allied to the bean-goose, but certainly 

 distinct, which is described by Mr* Bartlett, in the " Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society," Jan. 8, 1839, under the title of "the pink-tooted 

 " (Anser phoenicopus, Bartlett), and of which specimens were then 

 living in the menagerie of the Zoological Society. This species is 

 evidently merely u winter visitant to our island, and till recently has 

 been confounded with the bean-goose. As a full description of this 

 species and its differential characteristics would occupy more space than 

 is allowable, we must refer to the publication alluded to, in which the 

 distinctive peculiarities of the four species are detailed at length. M. 



