SPECIFIC VALIDITY OF AN SEE BUBBIBOSTBIS. 51 



I was much pleased that Mr. Stewart Baker so completely 

 corroborated my observations on the colours of the soft parts ; 

 he added the valuable information that he had seen specimens in 

 which the red of the bill was running in streaks or veins into the 

 yellow of the sides, thus showing that at certain times the bill 

 may be entirely red, as was the case with one of my specimens. * 



At the meeting of the British Ornithologists' Club a question 

 was incidentally raised as to why this bird had been called the 

 " Red-billed Grey-lag." A few words of explanation on this 

 point are necessary. 



During the past winter (1902) the late Mr. Ernest C. Tye, an 

 ardent wildfowler, and whose subsequent untimely death I deeply 

 deplore, had a friendly chat with me, when I mentioned the great 

 numbers of Wild Geese which I had secured, incidentally naming 

 the " Red-billed Grey-lag," but not thinking for a moment that 

 he would consider my chatter of sufficient importance to publish. 

 This, however, he did in his column of the ' Shooting Times' for 

 March 1st, 1902, and this caused some correspondents of the 

 paper to inquire what bird the Red-billed Grey-lag could be; to 

 which I replied. I can see no reason whatever why the bird 

 should not receive this as its common name ; it is quite appro- 

 priate and distinctive, and I propose that it should be known 

 as the 



Red-billed Geey-lag, Anser rubrirostris (Hodgson). 



The Grey Geese have been a puzzle to ornithologists from 

 the earliest times, their affinities running so close that the species 

 have not been properly discriminated ; it needed the sharp eye of 

 Bartlett to point out the characters which separate A. braehy- 

 rhynchas from A. segetum, while this latter was for long confused 

 with A. cinereus ; but slight though these characters are, everyone 

 now rightly admits its specific validity. Quite recently A . neglectum 

 has been separated upon even more slender characters ! These 

 facts must not be overlooked in discussing this question ; and 

 Mr. J. H. Gurney's words, when speaking of the White-fronted 

 Geese (cf. 'Ibis,' 1902, p. 272), are very significant and much to 

 the point : — " And so long as the slightest difference in colour — 

 even to the colour of an eyelid — can be found, combined (as it is 

 in this case) with some difference of habitat, surely such birds 

 * The adult female. 



