The Geese form an extensive and well-defined sub-family of the Anatidæ termed Anserinæ. They are distinguished from their allies by having the lores covered with feathers, and the tarsus reticulated back and front. The Geese differ further from the Swans, in having a relatively longer tarsus, and much shorter neck; and from the Ducks by their short, robust, subconical bill. Geese frequent both land and water, inland districts as well as the coasts and seas. The sexes do not present such striking contrasts of colour as in the Ducks. Geese moult once in the year, in autumn. The distribution of the sub-family is almost a cosmopolitan one, but the New World contains the greatest number of species. Half-a-dozen species are more or less abundant visitors to our islands in winter, but one species only breeds within our limits, and even this has been extirpated from most of its ancient haunts. These half-dozen species divide themselves into two distinct groups, four of them consisting of the Gray Geese, and two the Black Geese. The birds in the former group are the least maritime in their haunts, visiting the land to feed, whilst those in the latter division are inseparably associated with the sea during their sojourn in our area. As the former group contains the familiar “Wild Goose”—which is the original stock from which the farmyard Goose has been derived—we will deal first with the species contained in it. GRAY LAG GOOSE. This fine bird, the type of the genus _Anser_, and the _Anser cinereus_ of most modern writers, claims distinction not only as being the origin of the domestic race, but as the one species indigenous to the British Islands. For nearly a hundred years, however, the Gray Lag Goose has ceased to breed in its old haunts, the English Fens; it continues to breed, yet very locally, in the Hebrides, and in certain parts of the Highlands. Its domestication must extend to a very ancient date; yet captivity, beyond increasing its size and its fecundity, has caused but trifling variation in its colour. The bird, therefore, must be too familiar to every reader to require any description here. Once apparently so common, the Gray Lag Goose is now one of our rarest birds, a fact of great significance to the student of the geographical distribution or dispersal of species. The derivation of one of this bird’s trivial names—Lag—has given rise to much speculation, until Professor Skeat[6] apparently solved the riddle by suggesting that the word—which is an equivalent for late—applied to the bird’s habit of lagging behind to breed in the Fens, after other migratory Geese had departed north. A few Gray Lag Geese locally appear, chiefly on our eastern seaboard in winter, and it is more than probable that, normally, most of these birds are the individuals still continuing to inhabit the British Islands. These birds generally resort to the coast, frequenting