84 GAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



ground colour from pale greyish-buff (sometimes with the faintest 

 possible green tinge) to pale brownish-buff, and are spotted and blotched 

 with rich dark brown and paler brown, and with underlying markings 

 of purplish-brown and grey. Most of the blotches are distributed 

 round the largest part of the egg, often in an oblique direction, and 

 many of them are confluent. Some eggs have the large end covered 

 with a network of streaks, but more often only a few lines are seen. 

 The underlying markings are large, numerous and very conspicuous. 



I have an extremely handsome clutch of three eggs of G. major 

 in my collection, taken in Denmark on the 14th June, 1874. The 

 ground colour is a bright pinkish stone-colour blotched all over the 

 surface with very large blotches of Vandyke brown, some bright and 

 clear, others almost black ; the sub-surface marks are of the same 

 description and nearly as large, but of a lavender and purple-grey 

 colour, and rather less numerous. 



When newly taken, these eggs must have been extraordinarily 

 glossy, as now, after a lapse of forty-six years, they are still more 

 glossy than most snipes' eggs. These eggs measure between 1"80 

 (— 45'7 mm.), and 184 inches (^ 4G'7 mm.) in length, and 1"24 

 (= 320 mm.), and 1-28 (= 325 mm.) in breadth. They are of the 

 usual snipe and plover peg-top character in shape, but the texture 

 seems harder and closer than in most snipes' eggs. 



This curious pink ground colour agrees well with Gates' descrip- 

 tion of the eggs of G. solituria, a colour, which he says, renders the 

 eggs of that bird easily distinguishable from all other snipes' eggs. 



The ordinary full clutch consists, of course, of four eggs, as with 

 all other true snipes. 



Seebohm gives the size as varying between 17 and 1'9 inches 

 in length, and between 122 and 13 in breadth, and Dresser gives 

 the average as r75 X 1'24, and in 'Eggs of the Birds of Europe,' 

 p. 688, gives the variation in length as between 1'73 and 183 inches, 

 and in breadth as between 121 and 1'28. Jourdain gives the 

 measurements as bigger than this, and the average of thirty-one as 

 being 179 X 133 inches (= 45-4 X 337 mm.) 



General Habits. — The Great Snipe seems to be even more ex- 

 clusively nocturnal in its habits than the other members of the 

 genus, feeding almost entirely by night and not moving, unless 

 forced to do so, after the sun has risen at all high. 



