35 
by any darkening of the breast. Various authorities might regard this 
variation in size as grounds for splitting the subspecies into a small northern 
and a larger more southern race, but to the writer it does not seem advisable 
to dignify with name intermediates between named extremes. 
Some west coast birds combine the form and size of this race with the 
dark breast and underparts of minima or occidentalism but such never occur 
in the interior of the continent and arc to be regarded as either intergrades 
or hybrids with those races. 
This middle-sized goose is commonly well distinguished from the 
larger canadensis or “honker”, and probably also from minima , the cackling 
goose, by sportsmen of little ornithological knowledge, inferring a more 
distinctive specific individuality than can be detected in specimens by 
the keen-eyed, feather-splitting, laboratory specialist. The weight of this 
incidental evidence should not be disregarded. A common vernacular 
name, obviously derived from life characters, is “Short-necked Goose”, 
and suggests a measurement distinction in the flesh that is lost in specimen, 
but one that may possibly be more diagnostic than details that are com- 
monly available to the systematise It is generally and widely stated 
that the voice of this bird i3 recognizably different from that of other 
allied forms. A goose’s honking apparatus is fundamentally a trumpet, 
and like all trumpets the longer it is the deeper the tone of the note it 
emits. If the neck and windpipe of this bird is consistently shorter than 
in canadensis it would not be surprising if the voice made a more reliable 
recognition character than the appearance, for the ear is susceptible of 
far finer discrimination between small quantities than is the eye. 
Nomenclature. This bird has long been firmly incorporated in literature 
as B. c. hutchinsi and it is very regrettable that it must now be changed, or 
worse, that its traditional name be transferred to a comparatively unknown 
but entirely different form of the genus. There seems to be no alternative. 
It is evident that the name hutchinsi was applied by Richardson to a much 
smaller bird and from now on must be associated with an entirely different 
concept. Anser leucopareius Brandt, Bull. Sc. Ac. Petersb. I, p. 37 (1836), 
further characterized and figured by the author in “Description et leones 
Animaliuin Rossicorum No varum (1S36)”, is generally regarded by taxo- 
nomists as a synonym of B. c. hutchinsi as currently understood. I have 
examined both these papers and the type appears to be the dark-breasted, 
medium-sized, Pacific Coast bird which may be either an intergrade with 
B. c. occidentalis or a distinct race (See Brooks 1926). In the latter case 
the light-breasted, middle-sized bird of the interior of the continent may 
demand a new name, but in the absence of definite evidence to that effect 
I propose to include it under leucopareius. 
Owing to the confusion that this very unfortunate transference of 
name will cause I propose that the vernacular term “Hut chin’s Goose” 
be dropped from future use and that the middle-sized bird hitherto so 
called be designated the “Lesser Canada Goose” and the small one to 
which the name properly belongs be known as “Richardson’s Goose”. 
Distribution. Breeding from west coast of Hudson bay to Alaska and 
from the Arctic coast indefinitely southward. Migrating through the 
interior west of the Great Lakes and along the Pacific coast. 
