Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/446

422 They would then be on their autumn migration, and in all pro- bability were driven out of their course by the agency of adverse winds. In a great majority of cases the occurrence of American birds in England has been in the autumnal mouths. The clue to this, as Prof. Baird has remarked, will be found in a study of the laws of the winds of the northern hemisphere, as developed by the late Prof. Henry and Prof. Coffin.*

One or two points in connection with Mr. Crampton's Snow Goose deserve to be noted. The facility with which the bird became domesticated is remarkable, although this is not an isolated instance. Dr. Elliott Cones, in his 'Birds of the North West' (p. 551), quotes an account given by Mr. Ridgway of a Snow Goose, Anser hyperboreus, which had voluntarily become semi- domesticated at Mount Carmel, Illinois, and lived with a flock of tame geese for nearly a year. The bird had been crippled in the wing the preceding fall, but the wound, which was merely in the muscles, soon healed, and it escaped by flight. It flew about half a mile, and observing a flock of tame geese upon the grassy commons between the town and the river, alighted among them. It continued to stay with them, going home with the flock regularly every evening to be fed and enclosed in the barn-yard.

Another point to which attention may be directed is the singular form of the bill in this bird. The edges of each mandible have twenty-three indentations, or teeth as it were, on each side — a peculiarity specially noticed in Mr. Crampton's bird by Mr. Sweet- man. The inside or concavity of the upper mandible has also seven lateral rows of projecting teeth, and the tongue, which is horny at the extremity, is armed on each side with thirteen long and sharp bony teeth, placed like those of a saw, with their points directed backwards. The design and use of these conspicuous Itimellce (common to other geese, but remarkably developed in this one) become evident when we know the bird's food and its manner of procuring it. It feeds, says Dr. Elliott Coues,f upon reeds, grasses, and other herbs, which it forcibly pulls up by the roots, or twitches in two. The shape and singular armature of the bill thus admirably adapt it for seizing and retaining firm hold of yielding plant-stems.

See remarks on the occurrence in England of the American Red-breasted Thrush, 'Zoologist,' 1877, p. 16.

'Birds of the North-West,' p, 552.