456 POULTRY CULTURE 



upper mandible. The shape is also different from that of the Euro- 

 pean races. In profile the body has a more oblong appearance ; 

 the carriage is more erect ; the neck is long and slender, making, 

 in the smaller varieties, a more graceful type. In color, too, there 

 is a characteristic difference, the colored variety having a distinctly 

 brown shade not found in domestic races of European ancestry. 

 Notwithstanding these differences the Asiatic and European races 

 interbreed freely and produce fertile offspring. A possible link con- 

 necting two types is found in the Russian geese, in which nobby 

 protuberances develop on the heads of old birds, and which some- 

 times show, in their clay color, traces of the brown shade of the 

 dark Asiatics. 



The China Goose. ^ There are two Standard varieties of the 

 China Goose, the Brown and the White. A general description 

 of shape has been given above. The size is about the same as that 

 of the common goose. In color the Brown China is a brownish 

 gray, darkest on the head and back ; the White China is pure white. 

 The African Goose. As now known, the African Goose is in 

 appearance a large Brown China, with the brown shade eliminated 

 (in Standard exhibition specimens) from the plumage. Of the ori- 

 gin of this variety nothing definite is known. The confusion of 

 names and the lack of definiteness in descriptions of early writers 

 make it impossible, in many cases, to determine whether the geese 

 they describe as " Chinese" and "African" are the same as the 

 geese now known by those names. Early descriptions of the African 

 Goose, however, attribute to it brown color (like the Brown China) 

 and great size (unlike the Brown China), making it quite plain that 

 the present distinction in color is one of the common tricks of breed 

 making. The type is one not found in Africa, and considering 

 the Chinese custom of developing size in practical poultry, it is 

 much more reasonable to suppose that the China Goose in Amer- 

 ica is a refined, and the African Goose an enlarged, development 

 of an intermediate size. Whether either type is of purely Asiatic 

 blood may well be doubted. In the flocks of the African Goose 

 usually seen, indications of mixtures with Toulouse or common 



1 The China Geese are sometimes classed as ornamental, but though not pop- 

 ular, their undoubted adaptability to economic uses makes it proper to recognize 

 them in this class. 



