ANSEK ALBIFRONS. 71 



no difference in this respect. As regards the coloration of the underparts, it 

 varies very greatly, this not according to age apparently. Some birds are so 

 mucli marked with black underneath that the white is practically absent, only 

 showing through in small patches here and there ; in many the black pre- 

 dominates, whilst in others, the majority, the light colour is much in excess of 

 the dark, in some few there being very little black anywhere. The white on the 

 chin, too, increases with age, and, perhaps to a greater extent, also, on the gander 

 than on the goose. 



Young birds in first plumage.^ White feathering on head entirely absent, and 

 both on head and along base of upper mandible replaced by brown or brown- 

 blaek. On light grey belly (where black patches are always wanting) fairly 

 regularly dispersed grey speckles, resulting from the fact that the feathers have 

 grey centres. 



Anser gamheli is generally accepted as a distinct species (not by 

 Alpheraky), so that the area inhabited 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 a true A. albifrons which inhabits 

 Greenland, from wdiich place he excludes J., (jamheli, so that this must now^ 

 be accepted as one of its breeding-places. 



It is also found right throuoh the Pala^arctic Reoion from Iceland to 

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

 west through Asia Minor, Persia, and Northern India. Within our limits, 

 comparing it with the way in which the Grey Lag and the Bar-headed 

 Goose occurs, the W^hite-f routed Goose is a rarity, but a few do come every 

 year to Sind and parts of the Punjab. The Indian specimens in the 

 British Museum come from Lucknow, and the river Jheluni below 

 Shahpur. 



Hume says that during the thirty years he has shot in India, |jrior to 

 writing ' Game-Birds,' he only once shot this goose ; whether he shot 

 others afterwards I do not know. He records in ' Stray Feathers,^ i, 

 p. 259, shooting three geese in Sind, only he then called them Anser 

 erytliropus, but gave their dimensions as those of small A. albifrons, viz., 

 with wings from 15 to 15'75 inches. 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. 0. D. Lester records shooting three White-fronted Geese on the 

 14th February, 1890, at a place called Deviria near Anjar in Cutch. 



Hume, writing of these birds in ' Stray Feathers,' says he twice S(Xiv 

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



