60 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



19fch, thirteen old, thirteen young; to Feb. 4th, five old, sixteen 

 young ; March, one young. (I am not sure that the second lot, to 

 Dec. 18th, is quite accurate, as I forgot to count, and it was done 

 for me at home when away.) I think that the proportion of old 

 geese was greater in January than earlier ; but one man told me 

 about that time that he was getting more young than old. Old 

 and young are always mixed in the flocks, and when there are a 

 fair proportion of young, it is not often we get half-a-dozen out 

 of a flock throughout the season without old and young among 

 them. Of course there is much chance in this ; those shot out of 

 a flock may not show the same proportion as the whole lot would. 

 I heard of ten old out of fourteen being killed when we were 

 getting mostly young ones last winter. On Dec. 2nd several of 

 us shot together at a flock, and got forty, seven of them old ones. 

 It is noticed that the geese shot some distance off at sea on calm 

 nights are apt to have a larger proportion of old birds than those 

 which — probably because there are more young ones among 

 them — are tame enough to be shot at by day. 



The almost entire absence of young birds in some years does 

 not depend on the weather ; it has occurred in mild as well as 

 sharp winters. 1874-5, 1870-1, and 1879-80 were severe, and 

 young geese abounded in these years. The most complete failure 

 I have known was somewhere about 1847, 1 think ; there was one 

 week or so very sharp, the rest of the season mild. Throughout 

 the winter I only heard of one young one out of some thousands 

 being killed. The winter before last (1878-9) was the worst 

 excepting one during the last fourteen or fifteen years. The 

 first shot were two out of three young, but those shot next told a 

 different story. I shot sixty-five altogether, twelve of them young ; 

 but this was not the proportion of the whole, or anything like it. 

 Many of my geese were got out of small lots, probably families, 

 which, being mostly young, were tamer than the others, and 

 swam nearer inshore at high-water. In shooting at big lots 

 collected together, a fairer sample was got. In two shots at big 

 lots, — one on the water, the other on the mud, — I got ten and 

 fifteen; two young ones among the twenty-five. Some others 

 got shots at flocks, and had a still smaller proportion of young 

 ones. 



On Feb. 4th, 1879, a large number of White-bellied Geese 

 came, probably from the south, as just before coming to us they 



