'^10 GAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



twenty-eight eggs which have passed through my hands and are not 

 included in any of the above is 1'84 X 1'6 (= 46'8 X 40"3 mm.) 



The surface of the shell is very smooth, though pitted with tiny 

 pores, and there is always a considerable gloss, very highly developed 

 in many cases. The texture is fine and very close. 



Hume thus describes his series of eggs now in the British 

 Museum : — 



" The eggs, like those of the Great Bustard (which, though 

 smaller, they greatly resemble), vary much in size, shape and 

 colouration. 



" Typically they are very broad ovals, with a feeble tendency to a 

 point at one end ; but some are nearly spherical, some are purely 

 oval, while one or two approach a plover shape. 



" The shell, everywhere closely pitted with miniature pores, is 

 stout but smooth, and has always a shght, and at times a brilliant 

 gloss. 



" The ground colour varies from a clear, almost sap-green, through 

 various shades of olive-green, drab and stone colours, to a darkish 

 olive-brown. I have seen no specimens exhibiting the blue and 

 bluish grounds occasionally met with in the eggs of the Great 

 Indian Bustard. 



" The markings are brown, reddish or olive-brown, occasionally 

 with a purplish tinge, in some very faint and feeble, obsolete or nearly 

 so, a mere mottling, in others conspicuous and strongly marked ; but 

 in the majority neither very faint nor very conspicuous. In character 

 they are generally cloudy streaks, more or less confluent at the 

 broader end (from which they run down parallel to the major axis) 

 and more or less obsolete towards the smaller end. Occasionally, 

 however, they are pretty uniformly scattered over the whole surface 

 of the egg. 



" In size the eggs vary from 1'77 to 2'06 inches in length, and 

 from 1'5 to 1'7 in breadth ; but the average of twenty-three eggs is 

 1'88 nearly, by rather more than 1'59." 



The eggs in my own collection agree well with the above but 

 there are one pair which deserve separate description. These have 

 the ground colour a most beautiful green-grey, very pale and almost 

 silver in tone. The markings are as described by Hume, but are 

 unusually bold and stand out conspicuously on the pale ground, making 

 them both very handsome. 



General Habits. — The Lesser Florican is undoubtedly locally mi- 

 gratory, but, as Hume remarks, its migrations are most uncertain 



