356 JOURNAL, BOMB A 7 NATURAL BISTORT SOCIETY, Vol. XT, 



black underneath, that the white is practically absent, only showing 

 through in small patches here and there - y in many the black prepon- 

 derates, whilst in others, the majority, the light colour is much in excess 

 of the dark, in some few there being very little black anywhere. Th& 

 white on the chin too increases with age and, perhaps; to a greater extent 

 also on the gander than in the goose. 



Anser gambeli is accepted as a distinct species, so that the area in- ; 

 habited by the Indian bird is now curtailed, and it does not extend to 

 Japan though it does to the greater part of China. 



Salvadori, however, says that it is the true J. albifrons which inhabits- 

 Greenland, from which place he excludes A, gambeli, so that this must 

 now be accepted as one of its breeding-places. 



It is also found right through the Polar-arctic region, from Iceland to 

 Siberia, and in the winter, from the Mediteranean shores, Egypt, away 

 west through Asia Minor, Arabia, Persia and Northern India. Withio 

 our limits, comparing it with the way in which the Grey Lag and the 

 Bar-headed goose occurs, the "White-fronted goose is a rarity, but a few do 

 come every year to Sind and parts of the Punjab. The Indian speci- 

 mens in the British Museum come from Lucknow and' the river Jhelum y 

 below Shahpur. 



Hume says, that during the thirty years he had shot in India, prior to> 

 writing " Game Birds," he only once shot this goose j whether he shot 

 others afterwards I do not know. He records in " Stray Feathers," I, p. 

 2'59, shooting there three geese in Sind only, he then called them Anser 

 erythi'opus, but gave their dimensions as those of small A. albifrons, viz. y 

 with wings from 15' r to 15*75". It is probable^ in fact almost certain/ 

 however, that many occur which are not distinguished by sportsmen from 

 other geese, and are thus never recorded. 



; Lieut. C. D. Lester records shooting three White-fronted geese on 

 the 14th Feb., 1890, at a place called Deviria, near Anjan in Cutch. 



Hume, writing of these birds in " Stray Feathers," says he twice saw 

 them, once on the Jhelum and once on the Indus; on the first occasion 1 

 there were three birds, on the second only two, and they were quite by 

 themselves, not associating with other geese as one would have expected 

 to see. 



It is not a rare bird in Great Britain, but has only twice been 

 recorded from Heligoland in the last century. 



