GEESE. 
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feathers being also blackish brown. The eye is scarlet, the beak black, with its 
waxy covering greenish yellow, and the leg and foot blackish. 
In habits the cereopsis goose—commonly known in Australia as the Cape 
Barron goose—is much more of a land than a water bird, its gait being very unlike 
that of an ordinary goose, and its rate of swimming slow. The flight is, moreover, 
heavy. Essentially diurnal in their habits, these birds are nowhere common, and 
are rapidly diminishing in number, having been even exterminated in some of the 
smaller Australian islands. During a long sojourn in Victoria, the “Old Bushman ” 
states that he only saw these birds on two occasions—“ once in a small flock, and 
once when two pitched with the tame geese at Mordialloc (as they are fond of 
doing), and which were caught alive. They soon became tame, and used to stalk 
about the paddock; but they were very pugnacious with the other geese. Their 
call-note was a deep, trumpet-like sound.” The nest, although no great work of 
art, is better built than that of most members of the family, being smoothly rounded 
inside, and decorated with feathers and down. In size the eggs are relatively small, 
while in form they are rounded, and in colour yellowish white. The period of 
incubation varies from thirty to thirty-eight days, according to the weather, and 
the young are able to run immediately after breaking the egg. 
New Zealand Till within a comparatively recent date New Zealand was in- 
G°°se. habited by a nearly allied but larger goose (Cnemiornis calcitrans), 
which, like so many of the large birds of those islands, had totally lost the power 
of flight, the wings being very small, and the keel of the breast-bone wanting. 
In all probability these birds were exterminated by the Maories. As in the cereopsis 
goose, the metacoracoid of this extinct species was much wider and shorter than 
it is in the other members of the family. 
The true geese ( Anser ), together with several allied genera, 
constitute a fourth subfamily distinguished by the following char¬ 
acteristics, and including some forty species, having an almost world - wide 
distribution. In size the geese occupy a middle position in the family, none of 
them being large. The neck is of moderate length, being always shorter than the 
body; the lores are feathered; the beak is not longer than the head, and tapers to 
the extremity, which is covered by a large nail-like knob; while the metatarsus is 
rather long, exceeding the third toe in length, and is covered on all sides with 
reticulate scales. The tail-feathers may be either fourteen or sixteen; and although 
the two sexes are usually very much alike, there is great specific variation in 
colour. But a single autumnal moult of the plumage takes jdace; and all these 
birds are essentially vegetable feeders, many of them grazing in the well-known 
manner of the domestic breeds. They are all birds of strong, though somewhat 
heavy flight; and although some are confined to the Southern Hemisphere, the 
majority seek the remote regions of the north in which to breed, ranging in winter 
over the warmer parts of the same hemisphere. As compared with the swans, 
their more elevated bodies and relatively longer legs (in which the tibia is 
feathered nearly to the ankle) are indicative of more terrestrial habits. In the 
members of the genus Anser, there is but little if any black in the plumage of the 
head and neck; the beak and feet are light-coloured, and usually reddish in the 
adult; and the tail has sixteen feathers. 
The True Geese. 
