76 THE WHITE-FRONTED OR LAUGHING GOOSE, 
THE DIMENSIONS of my three birds, measured in the flesh, were 
as follows :— 
Length, 26 to. 27:75; expanse, (52 to 555; wing, as 
to 15°75; wings, when closed, reached exactly to the end 
of tail ; tail from vent, 5:2 to 6; bill at front, including nail, 
1'7 to 1°75 ; from gape, 1°87 to 2°0; tarsus, 2°45 to 2°75 ; weight, 
4 tbs 5 ozs. to 5 ibs 2 ozs. 
Legs and feet bright orange; nails pinky or greyish white ; 
bill pale livid fleshy, in one tinged orange on the culmen, 
in another similarly tinged on the nares and base of lower 
mandible; nail whitish or pale yellowish white; irides pale 
brown. . 
European specimens, that I possess, seem to be larger, the 
wings running to 17 inches. 
THE PLATE, taken from two of the Jhelum specimens, is 
admirable ; O sz szc omnes | 
Specimens, however, vary a good deal; one, which appears 
to be an adult male, has the whole chin white, as is also the 
broad band on the forehead and on each side of the upper 
mandible. A female has only one single feather white at the 
point of the chin, and the white band at each side of the 
upper mandible is much parrower; a third, also a female, 
but as I take it a young one, has the head and neck much 
paler brown, no white at all on the chin, and the band, both 
on the forehead and at the sides of the upper mandible, very 
narrow. The lower surface, too, varies very much; in one 
it is pale greyish white, with only a few comparatively small 
black mottled patches on the abdomen; in another, the 
mottled patches are so numerous and large that the black 
decidedly preponderates over the greyish white; in a third, 
there is scarcely anything but black. In one specimen, which 
I have from Oudh, the white frontal band is 1°15 broad; in 
the adult male above-mentioned, it is 0°85 broad; in the 
adult female it is 06, and in the young female only o3. In 
all these it is a band stretching straight across the whole fore- 
head, not running up on to the crown in a broad longitudinal 
band as it does in the Dwarf Goose. 
