STERNA. 311 



or less warm brown and a dull faint purplish brown, rather 

 sparsely distributed in spots, specks, and tiny blotches. Some 

 eggs almost entirely want the dark brown, and these have a very 

 dull dead appearance indeed. In shape they are a round oval, and 

 do not vary very much. 



" By April 6th these had almost all hatched off. There were a few 

 eggs, second layings, at places where we had robbed the nests. 



" I found quite fresh eggs of this species on sandbanks in the 

 Jhelum, near Find Dadan Khan, on the 9th April, and hard-set 

 ones (four in some nests) on a bank in the Chenab, near Wuzeera- 

 bad, on the 23th April 1870. Like S. seena and unlike Rhynchops 

 albicollis, this species rarely breeds together in considerable com- 

 panies. Two or three pairs are the most that are usually found 

 on one bank, and even these two or three commonly keep pretty 

 well apart." 



Captain Burgess, speaking of his experiences in the Dekhan, 

 remarks: ""While walking on a sandbank in the midst of the 

 Kiver Bheema, I was beset by a pair of these Terns, and on looking 

 about on the ground found two eggs deposited in a slight hollow 

 scraped in the moist sand not far from the edge of the water. 

 These birds, when flying over head, utter a cry very like the chirp 

 of a Sparrow. They breed during the months of March and April, 

 laying two eggs of a rich stone-colour, spotted chiefly round the 

 centre, and more sparingly over the larger end, with grey and light 

 brown spots, and measure an inch and rather more than two-tenths 

 in length by an inch in width." 



Mr. Gates tells us that " it breeds commonly on all the sand- 

 banks of the Irrawaddy. Eggs, three in number, deposited on the 

 bare sand. Lays in the middle of March." 



In shape the eggs are moderately broad ovals, distinctly pointed 

 towards one end. As a body, they are considerably more elongated 

 than those of S. seena. In colour the eggs run through various 

 shades of creamy, buflcy, and cafe-au-lait grounds (occasionally, 

 when quite fresh, with a faint greenish, or again pinky tinge), but 

 vary far less than those of S. seena. The markings consist usually 

 of small specks, streaks, and spots, not very thickly set, and occa- 

 sionally of a few large blotches, all these of reddish or purplish 

 brown ; and besides these of numerous faint hazy spots, clouds, 

 and streaks of pale purple, which underlie the first-mentioned 

 markings and seem to be more or less beneath the surface. The 

 eggs are almost perfectly glossless, far more so than those of 

 S. seena. 



In length the eggs vary from 1*10 to l a o, and in breadth from 

 0*83 to 1'02. I have had at one time or another at least a hundred 

 of these eggs, but I seem to have only eleven by me now, and the 

 average of these is 1'25 by 0*95*. 



* STERXA ALBIGKNA, Licht. Lichtensteins Tern. 



Colonel Butler received eggs of this species from the Persian Gulf. The 

 gentleman who took them thus writes : " As requested I made another trip 



