THE DWARF GOOSE. 79 
description, the bill should be dingy flesh colour, the feet sangui- 
neous. Gerbe and Degland give both bill and feet as a grey 
reddish, or flesh colour, but notice that some authorities de- 
scribe the bill as yellowish, and the feet as orange yellow, and 
surmise that these differences may be due to age.* But Nau- 
mann does not lead this to be inferred, at any rate where the 
feet are concerned. He says :—“The colour of the bill is in the 
young, before the first autumn moult, a reddish grey ; the nail 
blackish ; later this latter becomes greyish white, and the bill 
pale orange yellow; in old birds the bill is lively reddish yellow 
or orange ; the nail yellowish reddish white. There is never 
any trace of black upon the bill. 
“The naked edges of the eyelids are dirty yellow in the 
young, orange in the old ; the irides are dark brown. ~ 
“ The feet arein the young a pale dirty yellow, tending to- 
wards orange; in the old a lively orange yellow or almost orange 
red. The claws pale horn colour, dark brown towards the tips. ” 
He gives the following dimensions :— 
“ Length, 19°5 to 21:0; expanse, 39'°0 to 42°5; wing, 13 to 
Part tail. 2:05, to 3°25 ; tarsus, 2°32 to 2°4.” 
In some younger birds the dimensions are even smaller than 
these. 
Never having seen a freshly-killed specimen of the species, 
and really knowing nothing about it, I must leave it to future 
observers to settle whether two species are here confounded, or 
whether the differences in the colours of the soft parts are due 
to age, or what is more likely, to season. Linné got the birds in 
Lapland, &c., in the breeding season. Naumann and others have 
obtained them only in the winter. 
———- 
THE PLATE is fair, but the specimen figured is only just 
adult, and consequently shows only a narrow band of white on 
the forehead. According to Naumann, the young birds entirely 
want this white band, which gradually develops with age, and 
extends upwards and backwards on to the crown as a more or 
less longitudinal band, the very old birds having nearly the 
whole anterior half of the head white. 
* Since this was written, Dresser’s article on this species has appeared. In this he 
gives, *‘ bill dull white, with a flesh tinge ; nail pale horn colour; legs and edge of 
eyelids orange yellow.”” But he has not worked out the Geese in the exhaustive 
manner in which he has dealt with some other groups; he does not seem to have 
noticed that there are either a number of recognizable sub-species, or that there 
are very marked seasonal differences in the colours of the soft parts, which require 
notice and explanation. 
