42 GAMK-BIRDS 01'' INDIA 



hut few markings, and these much reduced in size, extend over the 

 lower half of the egg." 



" The eggs, I have measured, varied from 1"66 to 1"76 in length, 

 and from 1'2 to 1'28 in breadth, but the average of ten eggs is 

 171 X 1-24." 



They are by no means rare in the Gilgit Agency, and Major 

 Haughton assures me that they uncloubted'y breed there in some 

 numbers. 



Oates, in describing the eggs of the Solitary Snipe in the Collec- 

 tion of the British Museum, notes that "they are easily distin- 

 guished from the eggs of all other snipes in the Collection by reason 

 of their pinkish-bufif ground colour. . . . Many of the blotches 

 are streaky and make an angle with the major axis, seeming to be, 

 as it were, twisted round the egg from right to left, when the 

 specimen is viewed with the broad end uppermost." 



The Collection contains three of Mandelli's eggs, so the above 

 reference to the pinkish ground colour may be considered applicable 

 to those as well as the others and agrees with Hume's own descrip- 

 tion. The other Solitary Snipe's eggs in the Collection are two 

 clutches from Ta-tran-la, Tibet, and were taken at an elevation of 

 12,000 feet. 



In my own Collection I have a clutch of four eggs from Turkestan 

 and a single egg from Issakul, the latter of which was given me by 

 Lord Rothschild out of a clutch of four eggs in the Tring Museum. 

 All the eggs have the drab-yellow ground colour and vandyke-brown 

 markings of ordinary snipes' eggs with no trace of the pink tinge men- 

 tioned by Oates, and shown in the plate (III, No. 9) in the second 

 volume of the ' Catalogue of Birds' Eggs in the British Museum.' 

 All, however, have the same curious twisted character in the 

 markings. 



In 1908 Mr. W. P. Masson sent me two clutches of eggs said to 

 be of this bird. I had then not seen any authentic eggs, and as no 

 skin was sent with these I returned them, to my everlasting regret, 

 for they were without doubt quite correct. They were exactly similar 

 to those described by Hume and were most beautiful eggs, but they 

 were in general shape more like hens' than snipes' eggs, being broad 

 ovals rather than peg-top in shape, and had the pink tinge very highly 



