CO
Anser albifrons, Soopoli.
Vornacular Names.—[ 1
HOUGH doubtless a rare species, the White-fronted or
Laughing Goose is still a regular and certain coldseason
visitant to the submontane tracts of Continental
India, straggling occasionally further south.
I know now of its occurrence, in several rivers
of the Punjab, near Attock, Jhelum, Wazirabad, and
Gurdaspur ; in the Ganges and Jumna in the
SahdVanpur and Moozuffernugger Districts ; in the north of
Oudh, and Col. Graham says that they are found right up the
valley of Assam.
I shot three specimens on the Jhelum below Shahpur, and I
saw a pair on the Indus betwein Sehwan and Kotree. I have a
specimen killed a few miles south of Lucknow.
Outside our limits this species seems to range throughout
Northern and Central Asia. We hear of it on the Caspian, in
Western Turkestan, Yarkand, Siberia, Mongolia, China, and
probably Japan, but it has not as yet been recorded from
Afghanistan, Beluchistan, or Persia beyond the littoral of the
Caspian.
Westwards, it is common in parts of Asia Minor and in Egypt,
and North-east Africa, of course as a winter visitant only, and it
occurs more or less throughout Europe and Northern Africa, as a
summer or winter visitant or on migration, according to situation.
In Greenland probably, and throughout North America—and
it has been asserted in Japan also—a barely separable race of
this species (distinguished as A. gambeli) occurs, which scarcely
appears entitled to specific rank.
Admitting the specific identity of the two forms, then the
range of this species might be roughly indicated as the Northern
Hemisphere from about the Tropic of Cancer* to the
Arctic Circle, and in Asia, at any rate, well inside this latter.
* Dresser remarks that V. Heuglin surmises that this species scarcely crosses
the Equator ! Heuglin, I submit, says, nothing of the kind. He uses the word
" Wendekreis," which here means the Tropic a/ Cancer.
K