THE WHITEFROUTED OR LAUGH 
WG GOOSE. 
Anser albifrons, Scopoli. 
————_ 9. —-———= 
Vernacular Names.—[ ] 
en a () 
oy HOUGH doubtless a rare species, the White-fronted or 
y Laughing Goose is stilla regular and certain cold- 
season visitant to the submontane tracts of Conti- 
nental India, straggling occasionally further south. 
I know now of its occurrence, in several rivers 
of the Punjab, near Attock, Jhelum, Wazirabad, and 
Gurdaspur ; in the Ganges and Jumna in the 
ee and Moozuffernugger Districts; in the north of 
Oudh, and Col. Graham says that they are found right up the 
valley of Assam. 
I shot three specimens on the Jhelum below Shahpur, and I 
saw a pair on the Indus betwein Sehwan and Kotree. Ihave a 
specimen killed a few miles south of Lucknow. 
Outside our limits this species seems to range throughout 
Northern and Central Asia. We hear of it on the Caspian, in 
Western Turkestan, Yarkand, Siberia, Mongolia, China, and 
probably Japan, but it has not as yet been recorded from 
Afghanistan, Beluchistan, or Persia beyond the littoral of the 
Caspian. 
Westwards, itis common in parts of Asia Minor and in Egypt, 
and North-east Africa, of course as a winter visitant only, and it 
occurs more or less throughout Europe and Northern Africa, as a 
summer or winter visitant or on migration, according to situation. 
In Greenland probably, and throughout North America—and 
it has been asserted in Japan also—a barely separable race of 
this species (distinguished as A. gamdeli) occurs, which scarcely 
appears entitled to specific rank. 
Admitting the specific identity of the two forms, then the 
range of this species might be roughly indicated as the North- 
ern Hemisphere from about the Tropic of Cancer* to the 
Arctic Circle, and in Asia, at any rate, well inside this latter. 
* Dresser remarks that V. Heuglin surmises that this species scarcely crosses 
the Eguator ! Heuglin, I submit, says, nothing of the kind. He uses the word 
“Wendekreis,” which here means the 7rofic of Gancer. 
K 
