of the Zoological Society of London, in 1841, and eight eggs were laid.
Male; weight, eight or nine pounds; length, two feet eleven inches;
hill, large, pale yellowish red with a tint of orange; the tooth at the
end greyish white. Iris, greyish brown; the eyelids pale yellowish red
with a thurc of orange. Head, crown, neck on the back, and nape,
greyish brown, the feathers of the latter disposed in rows or lines,
forming a sort of furrows; neck in front, pale greyish white brown;
chin, throat, and breast on the upper part, pale greyish brown; the
last-named, below, white, and barred on tin1 sides with grey and greyish
white. Back on the upper part, greyish brown and barred across, the
fi ,itliers deeply edged with a paler shade; on the lower part light
bluish grey.
The wings have the second quill feather the longest; they reach,
when closed, not quite to the end of the tad; there is a hard protuberance
at the inner end of the wing. Greater wing coverts, greyish
brown; lesser wing coverts, darker leaden greyish brown—-both bordered
with whitish: of the primaries, the three outer ones are pale
grey*, the others dark leaden grey; the shafts of all arc white, the base
greyish white, the ends more or less black; tertiaries, leaden grey,
broadly margined with a lighter shade; greater and lesser under wing
coverts, white. Tail, leaden grey, the tip white, the outer feathers
almost entirely wdiitc; upper and under tail coverts, white. Legs and
toes, pale greyish yellowish red; claws, black.
The female is smaller than the male, and her plumage is less
distinctly marked. Length, two feet six inches.
The young are described as being darker than the old birds; such
in fact is the case with all the Geese.
l'ied varieties have occurred—one with the wing perfectly white;
another with white feathers along the breast and wing coverts. In the
specimen already alluded to, as having been shot near Yarmouth, the
lower part of the breast is described by Mr. Fisher as having had,
in some degree, the black markings, a feature in the plumage of the
White-fronted Goose.