Light-bellied Brent 161 



Sir R. Payne-Gallwey, writing of these two forms of brent, observes that, " I have 

 shot a great many adult brent with (i) the lower part of the breast and the abdomen pure 

 white ; (2) with these parts of very dark slate, almost as dark as the neck ; (3) with a dark 

 breast and abdomen and a patch of white, the size of the hand, on the lower part of the 

 breast. On the British coast I have often killed specimens of both the white and the dark- 

 bellied variety at the same shot. On the shores of North Holland you may shoot an entire 

 winter and not kill, or even see, a brent with a white abdomen ; whilst on an estuary in 

 France, out of many hundreds killed last season (1896), by a gentleman-gunner, only one 

 bird had white under-parts." 



These last facts seem to indicate the appearance in English waters of light-bellied 

 brent from Greenland, which do not get so far as France and Holland ; but what we have 

 learnt from Mr. A. Chapman in the last section clearly testifies that the arrival of brent in 

 England is generally dependent on the state of the ice and weather in the Sound. All this 

 taken together, and the question as to the winter haunts of the brent from Spitzbergen and 

 Franz-Josef Land, so far from clearing, still further complicate the matter. 



I hope that my statements of the circumstances requiring explanation in the 

 geographical distribution of this form of brent will not be overlooked by such persons as 

 may be in a position, and who may possess the material, to help to make things clearer than 

 they are at present. 



In the plates of bills I have not figured those of the light-bellied and black-bellied 

 forms of the brent, since they do not present any differences. 



The present notice was completed when there appeared Mr. V. L. Bianchi's work in 

 the Yezhegodnik Zoologicheskaya muzeya Akademii Nauk, 1902, in which (p. 325) the 

 author speaks of four examples of this goose obtained on Spitzbergen by Mr. A. A. Byalnitsky 

 Birulei and Dr. Bunge of the Russian expedition of 1 899-1 901, and of an egg brought from 

 Hornsund. 



Unfortunately the author does not state whether the skins brought from Spitzbergen 

 completely agree in colouring with the Branta bemicla glaucogaster of Arctic America, or with 

 the one example brought by Middendorff from the Taimyr peninsula. 



Y 



