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specimens in our museum to define the ranges of the various forms, to determine the real 
characters of the races, or even to agree unanimously upon the varieties and the 
degrees of their relationship with each other. One reason is that sportsmen have 
not been accurate enough naturalists and the naturalists have not been good enough 
r rtsmen, to decide the question unassisted. These birds often show differences in life 
t are obscure in specimens and vice versa. Naturalists have somewhat neglected the 
larger water birds under an impression that they have already been exhaustively studied. 
Sportsmen, intent on circumventing a few desirable species, have seldom been interested 
in any characters and habits that are not accessory to that end. They have largely limited 
their data to their own experience and often fail to appreciate problems that are raised by 
a wider and broader outlook. The sportsman and the naturalist each sees much that the 
other misses, but it is seldom that the two are brought together to supplement each other. 
Even with such a well-known bird as the Canada Goose, there is still a conflict of authority 
A 
Bills of the subspecies of Canada Geese; natural size. 
a, Honker; b, Hutchins’s; c, Cackling. 
as to whether it is a single or a composite species and as to the inter-relationship of the 
various postulated races. The American Ornithologists' Union Check-list recognizes only 
one species from the minute Cackling Goose to the big Honker, the Canada Goose proper. 
According to that authority we have four subspecies occurring in the west, all practically 
alike as far as colour goes and differing only in size. As there is considerable individual 
variation in size, and many intermediate specimens, the difficulty of separating the races is 
very great. They are perhaps more easily distinguished in life than in specimen. The 
voice is especially distinctive, deep and full in the Honker, higher in Hutchins’s, and quite 
shrill in the Cackling. This may be but another expression of size. The vocal organs of 
such birds are similar to horns. The larger the bird the longer the horn and the deeper the 
note, and the ear seems more capable of noting small differences of pitch than the eye is of 
