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Extract from the Diary of the Visit to Kolguev in 1902 of Mr. S. A. Buturlin, 



KINDLY COMMUNICATED BY THE AUTHOR 



On August 9, 1902, I landed on Kolguev. On the same morning the members of the Norwegian 

 expedition, who were going to winter on Matochkin Shar, killed, near Bugrino Stanovishchi, a pair 

 of true white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons), which I examined an hour or two after they were shot. 

 Their feet were yellow-orange, bills pale milky rose-colour, with a very slight tint of purple (or lilac) 

 and a scarcely perceptible admixture of yellow at the very edges of the nostrils, between the rami of 

 the lower mandible and in the middle of the culmen of the upper mandible (nail pale horn, like human 

 nail : ). They were old birds almost moulted. 



The same day I saw in the possession of Vasili Petrovich Popov from Pustozero, who had 

 been here already ten days with his schooner, a bean-goose (Melanonyx segetum), killed the previous day 

 (August 8), with an oval, slightly bent nail, short massive bill (not accurately measured), 23 teeth 

 on each side of the upper mandible, and typical (for this bird) annular extension of the yellow-orange 

 colouring of the bill. This was an old moulted bird. I did not take this bird from the Popov, but, 

 at his proposal, removed the heads and bills (Nos. 410-414 of my collection) of the bean-geese taken the 

 same day. 



On August 1 1 Father Platon Kulakov received as a present from the Samoyeds several freshly 

 killed geese, of which there fell to my lot four heads of bean -geese and the head of a white -front 

 with colouring similar to the above. 



During an excursion to the river Vaskina, on August 13, when crossing the river Kambalya, in 

 the early morning, a flock of some half-dozen Ъеап -geese were put up from the flooded land ; and during 

 the day two pairs of bean-geese flew over our camp on the Vaskina, but far off. 



On August 16 I was on the Promoinaya Gulf. This extensive sheet of shoal water, not less 

 than 25 square versts, is separated by a narrow sand-bar from the ocean, with which it communicates 

 by a strait about 100 fathoms wide. Even to my eye, already familiar with the vast boggy valleys of 

 the Kolguev tundra, the neighbourhood of Pomoinaya Guba produced the impression of a perfect plane 

 stretching for miles. Far to the north appeared the crests of the " Yurennye Sorlopy " ("sorlopy" 

 are high river-cliffs) and the rounded summit of the Dorozhkina Sopka (cone) ; but even the insignificant 

 sand-dunes (20 to 25 feet high) on the bar, trending westwards, produced the effect of hills in this 

 monotonous plain. 



The whole of this sand-flat, interspersed with mud, carrying the scantiest and poorest vegetation, 

 is thickly dotted with pools, meres, and lakes of the most heterogeneous sizes and forms, in one part 

 widely scattered, but in another connected by a whole labyrinth of channels with more or less stagnant 

 water. Such of the smaller of these sheets as are fresh water are probably the result of snow and rain ; 

 but others are sensibly brackish, and contain myriads of marine crustaceans. 



1 i.e. of quite the same colouring as indicated by myself in the article on this goose, and at the same time as the description of the 

 American variety, Anser albifrons gambeli, as if in distinction from the European form. 



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