1872.] 



MR. HOWARD SAUNDERS ON ANSER ALBATUS. 



521 



These measurements have been taken by Mr. Sharpe and myself 

 with the greatest exactness, at first independently, and afterwards 

 by carefully remeasuring whenever there appeared" the minutest dis- 

 crepancy. 



Since Cassin first considered that there was sufficient difference in 

 these dimensions to warrant a specific distinction, evidence strongly 

 comfirming his views has been received from Mr Bernard H. Ross, 

 who, in his paper on the Fauna of the Mackenzie-River District 

 (Nat. Hist. Rev. 18G2, p. 28G), writes as follows :—" There can be 

 little doubt of the existence of three species of Snow-Geese (exclusive 

 of the Blue Wavey of Hudson's Bay), as the Slave-Lake Indians have 

 a different name for each kind. The first which arrives is the middle- 

 sized species, which I believe to be the A. albatus ; next comes the 

 smallest sort, the A. rossii, and lastly the A. hyperboreus, which 

 arrives when the trees are in leaf, and is called the Yellow Wavey by 

 the Indians." It may be objected that savages and uneducated 

 people generally (though the failing is not confined to that class) 

 are great species-makers ; to this I would reply that, in the present 

 case, the Indians are clearly right about two out of the three species, 

 and the odds are therefore two to one in favour of their being correct 

 as to the third. 



The very fact of these birds having visited the milder climate of 

 the shore washed by the Gulf-stream is an additional evidence of its 

 distinctness as a species. Cassin lays especial stress upon the fact of 

 its habitat being confined to the extreme north-western portion of 

 the American continent ; and we know that on that coast the winter 

 set in last year so early, and with such unexampled severity, that of 

 the thirty or forty whalers which frequent Behring's Straits, only 

 three managed to escape from the ice ; while, on the other hand, I 

 am not aware that the more central and eastern portions have ex- 

 perienced a winter of any unusual rigour. 



* Colour red. 



