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168 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XX T. 



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it. According to Hume, the White-Crested Kalij sometimes makes 

 quite a respectable nest. He remarks : — 



" The Common Kalij hardly forms a regular nest. It 



'• gets together a pad, sometimes rather massive, sometimes 



" very slight, of fine grass and coarse moss roots, mingled 



with a little grass or a few sprigs of moss, and in a 



slight depression ; in this it lays its eggs. One which I 



measured in situ in May, 1871, in the Valley of the Sutlej, 



just below Kotegurh, was circular, 11-5 in diameter and 



4 inches in thickness outside, with a central depression 



" 6 inches wide and nearly 2 inches in depth in the 



" centre." 



The number of eggs generall}^ laid is, 6 to 9, but they sometimes 



lay as many as 14, and also sometimes as few as 4, as the late Mr. 



P. Dodsworth took this number of eggs very hard set. 8 or 9 eggs 



is probably the number most often to be found in a complete 



clutch. 



In general appearance they are exactl}^ like the eggs of the 

 domestic fowl, but are, perhaps, on the whole more glossy, and are 

 frequently somewhat pointed. The surface is very smooth with a 

 fine, close grain, but sometimes they are pitted with innumerable 

 little pores, though these are not normally nearly so numerous or so 

 conspicuous as those almost invariably found in the eggs of the 

 Peacock Pheasant. 



The colour may bo anything from a white merely tinted with 

 cream or bufi'to a buff of a rich red tone like that of the darkest 

 eggs laid by a Brahma fowl, but even redder than these. The 

 majority of eggs laid are a warm cream or reddish buff, and eggs 

 almost white are quite exceptional. 



The series of 60 eggs in the Hume Collection in the British 

 Museum vary in leng-th between 1*85" (44-0 mm.) and 2-05" 

 (52-07 mm.), and in breadth between 1-25" (31-7 mm.) and 1-55" 

 (39-4 mm.). All the eggs which have passed through my hands 

 come within these extremes, and including the 60 in this Collec- 

 tion the average of 100 is exactly 1-95" (49-5 mm.) by 1-42" 

 (361 mm.). 



Whether the White-Crested Kalij is polygamous or not seems 

 still to be a moot point, and it is quite possible that though it is 

 generally speaking monogamous, it sometimes indulges in mor- 

 manistic habits. Hume is strongly of opinion that it is a libel 

 upon this bird to accuse him of having more than one wife, and 

 says that he has many hundreds of times flushed young broods in 

 company with both parents, and that from the month of May to 

 that of October he has rarely put up an adult of one sex without 

 finding the pair to it close by. 



" Onithognomen," however, who wrote i-egularly for the Field in 



