THE WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. 
209 
coming off at the distance of 2J inches, the latter at that of 1 inch 2 twelfths, 
from the inferior larynx. The cleido-tracheal muscle is a direct continuation 
rf part of the contractor, but the sterno-tracheal is independent of them, and 
attached to two rings of the trachea. The contractor muscle terminates in 
the solid tube, at the distance of 9 twelfths from the inferior larynx. 
THE WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. 
Anser albifrons, Bechst. 
PLATE COOLXXX. — Wale and Female. 
Neither Wilson nor Nuttall seems to have been aware of the regularity 
with which this species migrate through the United States. When I 
shewed a drawing of it to the first of these authors, he pronounced it to be a 
young Snow Goose, although I described to him its peculiar notes. During 
the whole of my residence in Kentucky, a winter never passed without my 
seeing a good number of them ; and at that season they are frequently offered 
for sale in the markets of New Orleans. An English gentleman, who was 
on his way to the settlement of Birkbeck in the praries west of the Ohio, 
and who spent a few weeks with me at Henderson, was desirous of having a 
tasting of some of our game. His desire was fully gratified, and the first 
that was placed before him was a White-fronted Goose. I had killed seven 
of these birds the evening before, in a pond across the Ohio, which was 
regularly supplied with flocks from the beginning of October to the end of 
March. He pronounced it “ delicious,” and I have no reason to dissent from 
his opinion. From the numbers seen high on the Arkansas river, I presume 
that many winter beyond the southern limits of the United States. They 
are exceedingly rare, however, along our Atlantic coast. In Kentucky they 
generally arrive before the Canada Goose, betaking themselves to the grassy 
ponds ; and of the different species which visit that country they are by far 
the least shy. The flocks seldom exceed from thirty to fifty individuals. 
Their general appearance is that exhibited in the plate, and which I consider 
as their winter plumage, feeling pretty confident that in summer the lower 
part of the body becomes pure black. 
Vol. VI. 28 
