Contributions to the Ornithology of India, Sj'c, 259 



this which I myself shot in the Jumna in Etawah. It is very like 

 the bean g-oose^ but has the legs and feet pink ting-ed with Vermil- 

 lion^ and is smaller, being about 28 inches in leng'th to 30 inches 

 in the bean goose. The bill is only 2 inches in length against 

 nearly 2 -4 in the bean g'oose, and the central portion of the bill is 

 bright carmine instead of yellowish orange as in the bean goose. 

 This is another species easily verified,, and I hope some of our 

 numerous contributors will endeavour to find out something more 

 about the occurrence of this sjoecies in India. 



947. — Anser erythropUS, Flemming. — A. erythro- 

 pus, Limi. nee. Gmel. — xi. albifrons. Gmelin, Sfc. 



The white fronted goose is very rai'e in India. For the first time 

 in my life I saw and shot three specimens in the river Jhelum 

 below Shahpoor, and I again saw a pair in the Indus^ between 

 Sehwan and Kotree. No where else did I observe them during 

 the trip, though their small size, and very brown appearance, 

 renders them easily recognizable at long distances with the help 

 of binoculars. In neither cases were they associated with other 

 water fowl. In one case the three, in the other the pair, were 

 seated at the water^s edge on the river^s bank with no other birds 

 of any kind near them. The three specimens I obtained varied 

 a good deal ; the one which appears to be an adult male has the 

 whole chin white, as is also the broad band on the forehead and 

 on each side of the upper mandible. The female has only one 

 single feather white at the point of the chin, and the white band 

 at each side of the upper mandible is much narrower ; the third, 

 also a female, but as I take it a young one, has the head, and 

 neck much paler brown, no white at all on the chin, and the band 

 both on the forehead and at the sides of the upper mandible 

 very narrow. The lower surface, too, varies very much ; in one 

 it is pale greyish white with a few black mottled patches on the 

 abdomen ; in another, the mottled patches are so numerous and 

 large, that the black decidedly preponderates over the greyish 

 white; in one specimen which I have from Oudh, the white 

 frontal band is 1"15 broad; in the adult male above mentioned, it 

 is 0"85 broad; in the adult female it is 0"6, and in the young 

 female only 0-3. In all these it is a band stretching straight 

 across the whole forehead, not running up on to the crown in a 

 broad longitudinal band as it does in a minutus Naumann, which 

 latter by the way, and not the present species, is according to 

 Newton (I suspend my own opinion) the eri/thropus of Linnoeus. 



The dimensions of my three birds, measured in the flesh, were 

 as follows; length, 26 to 27 '7 5; expanse, 52 to 55' 5 ; tail 



