YOUNG FEMALE SNOW GOOSE. 
95 
description of the Snow Goose, neither that nor the internal pecii- 
liarities, are at all mentioned. 
The length of the bird represented in our plate was twenty- 
eight inches, extent four feet eight inches ; bill gibbous at the 
sides both above and below, exposing the teeth of the upper and 
lower mandibles, and furnished with a nail at the lip on both, 
the whole being of a light reddish purple or pale lake, except 
the gibbosity, which is black, and the two nails, which are of a 
pale light blue ; nostril pervious, an oblong slit, placed nearly in 
the middle of the upper mandible ; irides dark brown ; whole head, 
and half of the neck, white ; rest of the neck and breast, as well as 
upper part of the back, of a purplish brown, darkest where it joins 
the white, all the feathers being finely tipt with pale brown ; whole 
wing-coverts very pale ash, or light lead color ; primaries and se- 
condaries black ; tertials long, tapering, centred with black, edged 
with light blue, and usually fall over the wing ; scapulars cinere- 
ous brown ; lower parts of the back and rump of the same light 
ash as the wing-coverts ; tail rounded, blackish, consisting of six- 
teen feathers edged and tipt broadly with white ; tail-coverts white; 
belly and vent whitish, intermixed with cinereous ; feet and legs of 
the same lake color as the bill. 
This specimen was a female; the tongue was thick and fleshy, 
armed on each side with thirteen strong bony teeth, exactly simi- 
lar in appearance, as well as in number, to those on the tongue of 
the male Snow Goose ; the inner concavity of the upper mandible 
was also studded with rows of teeth. The stomach was extremely 
muscular, filled with some vegetable matter, and clear gravel. 
With this another was shot, differing considerably in its mark- 
ings, having little or no white on the head, and being smaller; its 
general color dark brown intermixed with pale ash, and darker 
below, but evidently of the same species with this. 
