254 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
delicacy of flesh. Its legs, head, neck, and bill, are black, 
a large triangular patch of white decorates the cheeks be- 
hind the eyes, and there are a few whitish feathers on 
the eyelids. The upper region is grayish-brown, with 
paler edges; the anterior is lightish, with a tinge of pur- 
plish-gray; the tail feathers, which number eighteen, are 
black, and the upper tail coverts white. It has a length 
of about three feet and a half; the wing is eighteen inches, 
and the tarsus nearly four inches long. It breeds in 
almost all sections of the country north of the thirty-third 
parallel, but its favorite nesting haunts seem to be the un- 
trodden regions of the far north, as it is exceedingly com- 
mon in Labrador, Newfoundland, and portions of Canada 
proper, British Columbia, Alaska, and the States and 
Territories of the Pacific Slope. It is found as far south 
as Texas in winter, and has been shot near the Mexican 
border in California. I have seen several small flocks of 
this species parading their goslings along the margins of 
lakes and streams in Idaho, Montana, and contiguous Ter- 
ritories, or swimming with them in the water when it was 
smooth. If they were pursued on such occasions, they 
fled, and left the young to take care of themselves, and 
this the piping creatures attempted to do, by diving or 
by fluttering along the surface at a rate of speed one 
would not give them credit for. The goslings are half 
grown by the middle of June, and as they are then highly 
edible, large numbers are killed by whites and Indians. 
The adults share their fate to a certain extent, for, owing 
to their moulting, they cannot fly, and are therefore 
easily knocked over with a club, an arrow, or a shot-gun. 
Thousands are shot every day from September to 
March by the whites, and hundreds of thousands meet 
their death at the hands of the Indians during the sum- 
mer months, when they are moulting. Yet they do not 
seem to decrease in numbers in the Far West, and are as 
destructive as ever to crops in some portions of the coun- 
