THE GAME BIRlJ.'S OF lABIA. 26 



every month of the year. The months in which most will be 

 foimd are those in which food is most abundant, a matter depen- 

 dant upon the rains and other climate influences. In Travancore 

 they breed steadily from March to -ruly, and Mr. T. F. Bourdillon 

 took eggs as late as August 20th. They make their nests — when 

 they make any — and la>- their eggs in much the same kind of 

 country and jungle as do the Red Jimgle-fowl, and, like the latter 

 birds, seem to specially approve of dense secondary growth and 

 bamboo jiingle. They breed freely in the Sholas, or small woods, 

 which nestle in the hollows in the Xilgiri Hills, but thej^ also breed 

 in just as great numbers in the vast woods of Travancore and 

 Mysore. Often they lay their eggs in a small hollow, either natui-al 

 or scratched out by themselves in the shade of some bush or 

 bamboo clump, and the nest consists merely of a slight collection 

 of rubbish and fallen leaves. Sometimes the nest is formed of a 

 mound of such material with a hollow in the centre for the eggs ; 

 more rarely it is comparatively weW made of sticks, leaves, bamboo- 

 spates, matted together in a solid mass whilst in still more cases it 

 is perched up on a dead tree or stump or a clump of bamboos. 



The number of eggs laid is rather a vexed question. Miss Cock- 

 burn, who was always extraordinarily lucky in the number of eggs 

 laid bv birds with which she came in contact, says that the num- 

 ber of eggs found in a nest is from 7 to 1 3 j Jerdon says from 7 

 to 10, and Davison says from G to 10. On the other hand Mr. J. 

 Davidson tells me that he has never found more than 4 eggs in a 

 nest, and Barnes mentions the number as 6 or 7, occasionally more. 

 Mr. J. Stewart, through whose hands have passed a very large 

 number of Travancore clutches, and who has seen an immense 

 number in situ in a letter to me sa5^s, " I am sending you a clutch 

 of 7 eggs of the Grey Jungle-fowl, an unusual number, for they 

 generally lay only 4 or 5, and sometimes even less." There is a 

 general tendency to overestimate the number of eggs laid by game- 

 birds, and from the testimony of modern collectors I think it will 

 be found that 4 or 5 eggs is the number most often laid, and that 

 whilst a fair number of clutches of 6 or 7 eggs may be found, 

 more than this is quite abnormal. 



The eggs are of coiirse very small, but can be otherwise all 

 matched by varieties of the domestic fowl's eggs. The most com- 

 mon type is fawn, or fawn-buff, but they varj- from very pale cream 

 to a rich warrn bufl, generally quite immaculate, but sometimes 

 covered with innumerable freckles of light brown, and occasionally 

 distinctly spotted and speckled with light brown, dark brown, or 

 reddish brown. In the latter case the spots are generally sparsely 

 and irregularh' scattered over the whole surface of the egg and xsLry 

 in size from that of a pin's head to spots as much as a couple of 

 millimetres or more in diameter. These spotted and freckled eggs 

 4 



