5 о Geese of Europe and Asia 



the under mandible cadmium-yellow ; naked skin on mental angle and corner of mouth of 

 the same colour, but paler" (Stejneger). 



According to the kind communication of Mr. Frohawk, the bills of the live geese 

 of this species (probably not quite adult birds) examined by him in the London Zoological 

 Gardens (January 30, 1902) were pale salmon-pink, nails whitish black and a streak passing 

 through naves, as also legs and feet apricot -yellow, claws white, ceroma greyish. 



Finally, Dr. Sushkin answered my question as to the white-fronted geese from the 

 Turgai district as follows: "In adult bird, bill in both species {i.e. in greater and lesser 

 white-fronted goose) beautiful pure rosy red colour, called in English peach-blossom. 

 Intensity of this colour varies, and apparently is connected with the afflux and reflux of 

 blood (do not confuse this phenomenon with extravasation, which is only the consequence of a 

 wound in the bill or its neighbourhood) ; sometimes the bill may be very pale. In the lesser 

 white-fronted goose I have not seen orange colouring on MIL In A. albifrons it appears 

 on bridge of nose {between nares), at base, and laterally on rami of lower mandible and 

 about nares. This colouring is always very ill defined. Perhaps traces of it are constantly 

 present, but it becomes visible only in consequence of the reflttx of blood, from which the rosy 

 ground colouring fades." 



These descriptions are in such agreement, that if we add to their evidence that of 

 Naumann's drawing (Vog. Detitschl. pi. 289), representing the bill of A. albifrons just as it 

 is described by Messrs. Degland and Gerbe, Buturlin, Frohawk, Sushkin, and Ridgway, no 

 doubt remains but that in both the European and the American white-fronted goose the 

 bill is normally coloured the same, and an orange or yellow bill only occurs in dry skins or 

 perhaps, as an exception, in very fat examples, when a layer of subcutaneous fat covers the 

 whole area of the bill. 



To finish with the colouring of the bill in the white-fronted goose, I may here quote 

 the following description from Professor Menzbier's Ptitsy Rossii, vol. i. : " In adult bird 

 bill orange-yellow with whitish nail " (p. 738), and farther on (p. 739), " in regard to colouring 

 of bill, white-fronted goose comes nearest of all to grey-lag." In the article on the latter 

 (I.e. p. 755) we read that " its bill is flesh-colour with white nail." This last indication, 

 which is perfectly true, does not agree in the least with the orange-yellow colouring given 

 by the author on p. 738. At the end of the present book I quote, with the author's per- 

 mission, Mr. Buturlin's account of his journey to Kolguev in 1902 ; at the very beginning 

 of which he speaks of fresh-killed white-fronted geese, and describes their bills exactly as 

 they appear in my own description. 



Although I have perhaps dwelt too long on the question of the true colouring of the 

 bill of the white-fronted goose, I fear that I have yet not sufficiently clearly expressed my 

 meaning. This, then, is that neither orange nor yellow occurs normally as the entire 

 colouring of the bill in A. albifrons, and that there is no difference whatever between the 

 colouring of the bill in the latter and that of the American A. gambeli. Accordingly a 

 somewhat greater size of beak is the sole distinguishing character of the American form, 

 and that only as a rule or in extreme cases, but nowise universally. 



Geographical Distribution 



The present is not the first time that I have had occasion to unite certain forms of 

 geese regarded by the majority of ornithologists as distinct. I have indeed been compelled 



