GALIilNAGO NEMORICOLA 49 



discovered to be the eggs of the Solitary Snipe, probably by the 

 identification of a skin. 



At the sarae time it must be noted that Hume distinctly states 

 tiiat when Mandelli's collectors brought in these eggs they brought 

 in with them the skin of a Wood Snipe. The date and name on the 

 eggs, however, would seem to show that this skin afterwards proved 

 to be that of a Solitary Snipe. 



My own experience, meagre as it is, as regards their nidification, 

 would appear to confirm Gates' opinion. On the 11th June, 1908, 

 one of my Khasia collectors brought in to me a Wood Snipe together 

 with a single egg and some fine tangled grass, which he said had 

 composed the nest and which was clogged and matted with the 

 contents of other eggs which had been broken by the trapped 

 bird. Unfortunately the egg which was saved is undoubtedly an 

 abnormally small one, and my collector informed me that when 

 he set the nooses for the bird he saw that there were three big 

 eggs and one much smaller, but that in colouration they were all 

 alike. 



The single egg measures only 1'5 X 1'04 inches and is much like 

 many eggs I have seen of GaUinago galUnago but is unusually grey- 

 brown in tint. The ground is a pale stone colour and the markings 

 consist of heavy blotchings of vandyke brown with a few underlying 

 ones of grey or lavender. The smaller half of the egg is but very 

 sparsely marked, but on the larger third the blotches form a deep 

 dark ring, inside which again the markings are numerous but not 

 confluent. 



The texture is fine and smooth with a faint gloss and the shape 

 is the ordinary sub-pyriform shape of most snipes' eggs. 



Hume, writing of the breeding of this snipe, writes : — 



" That they breed in the Himalayas between elevations of about 

 7 and 10,000 feet (and perhaps, though I doubt it, considerably 

 higher) is certain. That they begin to lay early too is probable. 

 Hodgson notes that on the 10th March the eggs in the ovary of a 

 female were swelling, and another shot early in April contained a 

 nearly full-sized but uushelled egg. But no European, 1 believe, has 

 ever yet taken the nest, though Mr. A. G. Young writes that he 

 knows they do breed in Kulu." 



It is more than probable that we shall eventually find that the 

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