304 



are large and bold ; in some they are scattered evenly over the 

 whole egg, in the majority they are most numerous about the 

 large end ; in some the markings are pretty densely set, in others 

 they are very sparse. 



In length the twenty-three eggs I was able to preserve varied 

 from 1-86 to 2-03, and in breadth from 1-26 to 1-45, but the 

 average of the lot is 1/96 nearly by 1*34. 



Sterna anglica, Mont. The Gull-billed Tern. 



Gelochelidou anglicus (Mont.}, Jerd. B. 2nd. ii, p. 836. 



Sterna nilotica, von Hass., Hume, Rough Draft N. $ E. no. 983. 



The G-ull-billed Tern is common enough all over India in the 

 cold weather, but very few indeed remain to breed with us, and 

 these only in the far North- West. In Cashmere I have little 

 doubt that they do breed, but no one has yet ascertained the fact. 

 I have never found this species breeding in the North-West 

 Provinces ; indeed, it seems to leave these latter for more northern 

 districts as soon as the hot weather sets in. That occasional 

 stragglers at any rate breed in the North-west Punjab I have 

 certain proof. On the 28th April, 1870, when searching a sand- 

 bank in the Cheuab a little below the bridge of boats between 

 Wuzeerabad and G-uzerat, I found a pair of the G-ull-billed Terns 

 breeding. They were by themselves. About fifty yards distant 

 in one direction was a colony of Glareola lactea, and about seventy 

 yards in another were a group of nests of Rhynchops albicollis. 

 On the same sand-bank I found the eggs of Sterna seena, Sterna 

 minuta, Sterna melanoyastra, and Esacus recurvirostris. The 

 pair of this present species were very tame, and allowed me to 

 approach within ten yards before rising. When I walked up to 

 the spot, 1 found a single egg in a considerable depression of a 

 tiny sand mound, which was crowned by a dwarf bush of jhao 

 (Tamarix dioica) ; I did not touch the egg (on either side and 

 within a few inches of which the birds had been sitting), but re- 

 treated some twenty paces, on which both Terns immediately 

 resumed their former position. As I moved, they again rose, and 

 I shot the female (as it proved) as she was flying away. 



The egg, which I secured, was perfectly fresh, whereas the eggs 

 of all the other species were more or less hard-set. It was a 

 rather elongated very perfect oval, measuring 1'78 in length by 

 1/28 in breadth, a typical Tern's egg in colouring, with a delicate 

 greenish stone-coloured ground w 7 hen fresh, now faded to a creamy 

 drab, with numerous streaks, spots, and blotches of deep brown 

 and brownish yellow, and more or less faint clouds of pale inky 

 purple appearing to underlie the surface of the egg, which was 

 almost entirely devoid of gloss. 



There is to my mind no possible doubt of the authenticity of 

 the egg, but it is somewhat smaller than those that Colonel Butler 

 procured from the Persian Grulf . The egg closely resembles some 



