YOUNG OF THE SNOW GOOSE. 593 
scapulars, blacky thickly and beautifully crossed with undulating lines 
of vinous bay ; lower part of the back, more dusky ; tail-coverts, long, 
pointed, whitish, crossed.as the back; tail, pointed, brownish ash; the 
two middle feathers an inch longer than the rest, and tapering; shoul- 
der of the wing, brownish ash; wing-coverts, immediately below, 
white, forming a large spot; primaries, brownish ash ; middle seconda- 
ries, black, glossed with green, forming the speculum ; tertials, black, 
edged with white, between which, and the beauty spot, several of the 
secondaries are white. 
The female has the-whole head and neck yellowish white, thickly 
speckled with black, very little rufous on the breast; the back is dark 
brown. The young males, as usual, very much like the females during 
the first season, and do not receive their full plumage until the second 
year. They are also subject to a regular change every spring and 
autumn. ; 
———_ 
YOUNG OF THE SNOW GOOSE.— ANAS HYPERBOREA. — 
| Fie. 284, 
Bean Goose, Lath, Syn:iii. p. 464.— White-fronted Goose, Ibid. iii. p.463 ; Arct. 
Zool. No. 476. — Blue-winged Goose, Lath. Syn.,iii. p.469.— Peale’s Museum, 
No. 2636. ; 
ANSER HYPERBOREAS.— Bonaparte. 
Tue full-plumaged, perfect male bird of this species has already 
been figured in No. 279, and I now hazard a conjecture, founded on the 
best examination I could make of the young bird here figured, com- 
paring it with the descriptions of the different accounts above referred 
to, that the whole of them have been taken from the various individu- 
als of the present, ina greater or lesser degree of approach to its true 
and perfect colors. : ; 
These birds pass along our coasts, and settle in our rivers, every au- 
tumn ; among thirty or forty, there are seldom more than six or eight 
pure white, or old birds. The rest vary so much, that’ no two are ex- 
actly alike; yet all bear the most evident marks, in the particular struc- 
ture of their bills, &c., of being the same identical species. A grad- 
ual change so great, as from a bird of this color to one of pure white, 
must necessarily produce a number of varieties, or differences in the 
appearance of the plumage ; but the form of the bill and legs remains 
the same, and any peculiarity in either is the surest mean we have to 
detect a species under all its various appearances. It is therefore to 
be regretted, that the authors above referred to in the synonymes, have 
paid so little attention to the singular conformation of the bill; for 
even in the description of the Snow Goose, neither that nor the inter- 
nal peculiarities are at all mentioned. 
The length of the bird, represented in Fig. 284, was twenty-eight 
inches; extent, four feet eight inches; bill, gibbous at the sides, both 
above and below, exposing the teeth of the upper and lower mandi- 
bles, and a with a nail at the tip on both; the whole being of 
0 Ks 
