320 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 



M. Vieillot committed with regard to M. Labillardiere's 

 bird in consequence of the obscurity in which the true 

 characters of the Cereopsis were then involved. A 

 specimen, said to have been taken in Van Diemen's 

 Land, was brought home by Labillardiere, and depo- 

 sited in the Paris Museum. On this individual, which 

 he never suspected to be the same bird that he had 

 previously designated le Cygne cendre, M. Vieillot 

 founded a new species of Goose, the Anser griseus. 

 It is impossible to read the description which he has 

 given of this species, and not to recognise the Cere- 

 opsis. How he could afterwards figure, in his Galerie 

 des Oiseaux, what we have every reason for believing 

 the same bird, and in all probability the same individual 

 specimen, under its true name of Cereopsis, without 

 acknowledging his previous error, which certainly was 

 of the most venial kind, it is no^ for us to conjecture. 

 It is possible that he may in the interval have entirely 

 forgotten his description of the Goose, for many of his 

 works bear evident marks of haste and inattention. 

 We have, however, thought it right to direct the atten- 

 tion of zoologists to this point, because, although the 

 name of le Cygne cendre has never been adopted in 

 our catalogues, that of Anser griseus still continues to 

 be quoted without hesitation as a genuine and substan- 

 tive species. 



While the naturalists at home were thus puzzling 

 themselves with respect to the location of this bird, the 

 navigators who observed it in its native countiy seem 

 for the most part to have regarded it as a species of 

 Goose. Nearly all the voyagers who have visited the 

 south coast of New Holland during the last thirty years 

 mention a bird which we cannot doubt to be the pre- 

 sent species, as extremely plentiful on various parts of 

 that coast, and more especially in its neighbouring 

 islands, from the Archipelago of the Recherche on the 



