. The wild fowl of the United States and British possessions, or, The Swan, geese, ducks, and mergansers of North America [microform] : with accounts of their habits, nesting, migrations, and dispersions, together with descriptions of the adults and young, and keys for the ready identification of the species : a book for the sportsman, and for those desirous of knowing how to distinguish these web-footed birds and to learn their ways in their native wilds. Waterfowl; Game and game-birds; Gibier d'eau; Gibier. \v \ I It i< : I .^: I 1. 270 WATER FOWL. GENUS AXSER (Latin atiser, a goose). Ans
. The wild fowl of the United States and British possessions, or, The Swan, geese, ducks, and mergansers of North America [microform] : with accounts of their habits, nesting, migrations, and dispersions, together with descriptions of the adults and young, and keys for the ready identification of the species : a book for the sportsman, and for those desirous of knowing how to distinguish these web-footed birds and to learn their ways in their native wilds. Waterfowl; Game and game-birds; Gibier d'eau; Gibier. \v \ I It i< : I .^: I 1. 270 WATER FOWL. GENUS AXSER (Latin atiser, a goose). Anser, Rriss. Orn., 1760, vol. vi., p. 261. Type Anns atiser, Linn. Bill stout, not longer than head, depth at base less than half the length of culmen, tapering to tip. Serrations of maxilla visible when bill is closed. Nostrils on basal half of maxilla, placed high up near culmen. Tarsus shorter than middle toe and claw. The White-fronted Oeese of the Old and New Worlds have •been separated as a species and subspecies on a difference of size averaging one inch in the total- length of the adult and .37 inch in extent of the culmen. This is a worse case than the Snow Geese, because the White-fronted Geese of the two hemispheres are so nearly equal in their dimensions that, the locality of a specimen being unknown, its identification is im- possible, for it would not be difficult to find individuals among the European White-fronted Geese that were even larger than some of the American. As I have had occasion to remark, when writing of certain other species in this book, size alone is a most unsatisfactory character (?) to go by in determining species or subspecies, and when persisted in is most apt to create confusion. In this instance I do not consider that this slight difference of dimensions is of sufficient consequence to cause the recognition of two forms of this Goose, and in this book, therefore, I have placed the species and its so-called subspecies under the name bestowe
Size: 941px × 2657px
Photo credit: © Library Book Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectgameandgamebirds
