304 
Its eggs are deposited at heights of from eight to twenty-five 
feet from the ground, in some large cavity, or in the depression 
Length, 17°9 to 19'2 ; expanse, 45°0 to 50°5; wing, 13°0 to 14:9 ; tail, 7°3 
to 84; tarsus (feathered throughout) 2°05 to 2°4; foot, greatest length, 3°4 
to 41; greatest width, 3:9 to 4°35 ; mid toe to root of claw, 1:35 to 1°65 ; its 
claw straight, 0°9 to 1:03; hind toe, 0°75 to 0°9; its claw, straight, U°7 to 
0°82 ; inner toe, 1°0 to 1°25; its claw, 0°9 to 1°05; bill, straight from edge of 
cere to point, 0°85 to 0°98; from forehead, straight to point, 117 to 1°42; 
from gape, 1°6 to 1:7; width at gape, 1°0 to 1°38; height at front at margin 
of cere, 0°48 to 0°56 ; length of cere, 0°5 to 0°63 ; wings, when closed, reach to 
end of tail or fall short of it by not more than 1”’, lower tail coverts fall 
short of end of tail by from 2°25 to 3°8. 
The third, or third and fourth primaries are the longest ; the first from 2°5 
to 3:0, and the second from 0°6 to 11, shorter. The external tail feathers 
are from 0°45 to 0°9 shorter than the central ones. Weight from 1 tb 6 oz. 
to 2 Ibs., but 1 tb. 8 oz. is about the average. 
Descriprion. The front of the toes sparsely feathered with dingy white 
bristly feathers ; terminal joints with three, transverse, soft scales, or folds of 
skin, pale greenish brown; soles yellowish white, papillze conspicuous but 
soft ; elaws, which though sharp are little curved, and comparatively rather 
feeble, pale brown at their bases, dark brown at the tips; inner edge of 
middle claw somewhat dilated. 
Trides. _ Brown, in some light, in some deep. 
Bill. Horny black, pale and greyish on lower mandible. 
Cere. Dingy,a mixture of dirty, pinkish, brownish, and yellowish, horny— 
varies a good deal. 
Tongue. Thick, fleshy, broad, membraneous and slightly divided at the 
tip. 
Cruliane (of an adult male, shot on the nest, March 6th, 1867). Lores 
with a prominent tuft of white, bristle-like feathers, with widely separated 
webs, and shafts prolonged some distance beyond webs, such prolongation 
being black or blackish brown, and a few of the feathers with traces, of one or 
more, dark brown or blackish bars. A somewhat similar tuft on the end of 
the chin, but without the black tips. Feathers, of point of forehead, imme- 
diately over the eye, behind the eye as far as the ear aperture (which is 
enormous) and round below the eye to the base of the lower mandible, inclu- 
ding the feathers of the eyelids, greyish white with blackish tips and most 
of them with narrow, transverse, black or blackish brown bars, a stripe of 
these feathers behind and partly below the eye tinged ferruginous. From 
the base of the chin, a fine of dark brown to blackish feathers runs (bounding 
the greyish white, barred ones, above described) round the cheeks, behind 
the ear opening, and behind the eye, to the top of the head, defining the facial 
disk, which is not very decided ; below this line (some of the feathers of which, 
especially near the chin, are a good deal mottled or at times barred with 
white, dingy white or rufous) a large, pure white patch on the centre of the 
throat. Centre of forehead, top and back of the head, back and sides of the 
neck, the feathers a rich chesnut, more or less broadly tipped with blackish 
brown, with conspicuous, but somewhat irregular, white spots on the tippings. 
The whole back, scapulars and wing coverts, except those of the primaries, 
dingy ferruginous at their bases, the terminal portions (of greater or less 
extent) white, obscurely barred with irregular and more or less incomplete, 
dark brown bars and the interspaces closely speckled and mottled with the same 
colour. In many cases, traces of the barring and mottling extend up the 
