406 Mr. A. Hume on Indian Ornithology. 



Female. Length 5 '5 to 5*9 ; expanse 9 to 9'5 ; tail from vent 

 2*2 to 2*72 ; wing from carpal joint to tip of longest primary 

 2'87 to 2*96, when closed reaching from within 1"1 to 1*7 of 

 the end of the tail; foot, greatest length 1*1 to 1*17, greatest 

 width -72 to -8; bill from front -35 to "38; weight from -38 to 

 •6 oz. (Five females measured and weighed.) 



Description. — The legs and feet were in some pale waxy- 

 yellow, in some dingy, in some fleshy-yellow or yellowish-fleshy, 

 the feet, especially at the joints, more or less tinged with brownish, 

 the claws rather pale brown ; the bill had the upper mandible 

 brown, in some blackish-brown, the lower in some waxy-, in 

 some fleshy-, and in some dingy yellow ; irides brown. The 

 male has the forehead, top of the head, and nape greyish-white, 

 grey, or white, in different specimens, each feather with a con- 

 spicuous, linear, median, black streak, a narrow, pure white 

 superciliary stripe starting from the base of the bill and extend- 

 ing behind the eye over the ear-coverts; the lores, and a 

 moderately broad stripe directly behind the eye (and immedi- 

 ately under the white stripe), involving the upper portions of 

 the ear-coverts, black ; below this another, greyish-white stripe, 

 involving the rest of the ear-coverts ; below this, starting from 

 the base of the lower mandible, a black stripe ; below this, from 

 the lower angle of the lower mandible, a greyish-white stripe, 

 which, again, is divided from the greyish-white of the chin by a 

 narrow inconspicuous dark streak. 



In the fresh birds in breeding-plumage which I am describing, 

 all these streaks and stripes are as clearly and sharply defined 

 as if painted ; but at other seasons, and in stuff'ed specimens, 

 they are not so clear. The whole of the back, scapulars, and 

 tertials are hair-brown, the former two very broadly, the latter 

 more narrowly margined with pale, more or less sandy- or even 

 rufous-brown. In many specimens the darker median streaks 

 of the back-feathers are reduced to mere lines ; and in some the 

 rufous tinge on the upper back is well marked. The primaries 

 and secondaries and their coverts are a mixture of hair-brown 

 and rich rufous (recalling in colour the wings of Mirafra ery- 

 throptera), the extent of each varying in different specimens, 

 but the brown predominating in the earlier primaries and every- 



