CURSORIUS. 325 



rical and perfectly glossless. The ground-colour is a yellowish stone- 

 colour or fawny white, and they are closely mottled, spotted, and 

 in some specimens lined, all over with dull blackish brown and pale 

 inky purple. In some eggs the markings are denser and darker, 

 in some they are comparatively well defined, and in others they 

 are confused and cloudy. These eggs so closely resemble those of 

 G. galliciis that it would be difficult to separate them." 



In length the eggs vary from 1-14 to T26, and in breadth from 

 0-93 to 1-02; but the average of a dozen is 1-19 by 0-97. 



Cursorius gallicus (Gin.). The Cream-coloured Courser. 

 Cursorius gallicus (Gm.}, Hume, Rough Draft N. fy E. no. 840 bis. 



I believe that the first really authentic eggs of the Cream-coloured 

 Courser ever obtained were those procured for me in 1868 by Khan 

 Nizam-ood-deen Khan, the well-kuown Punjab sportsman, in the 

 neighbourhood of Urneewalla in the western portion of the Sirsa 

 District. I quote the note I published at the time on the sub- 

 ject : 



" When shooting with the Khan in the Sirsa District, I shot a 

 Cursorius gallicus. He then told me that there was another species 

 which he described, and of which he some days later procured a 

 specimen, and which proved to be C. coromandelicus. He told me 

 that the former bred in the desert portion of the Sirsa District, 

 but that he had never seen the eggs of the latter, which was there 

 a comparatively rare cold-weather visitant. 



" I particularly asked him to watch for the eggs of both species 

 and obtain them if possible. In course of time he wrote that he 

 had obtained a pair of birds with one egg, and later that he had 

 obtained two more pairs with two eggs each. 



" He sent me the five eggs and the three pairs of birds, all C. 

 gallicus and he certified that in each case he had himself seen one 

 or other of the birds actually on the eggs before touching them, 

 and had himself shot the old bird in each case, which, tame as the 

 birds there are, was a matter of no difficulty. He had procured other 

 similar eggs, but as they had been brought in by others, he could 

 not speak to them for certain and did not send them. 



" Xow, these eggs could have been laid by no other known bird 

 belonging to the Sirsa avifauna, with which I am well acquainted, 

 except perhaps the C. coromandelicus, of which I was equally 

 anxious to obtain eggs, and which are far rarer in Sirsa than 

 C. gallicus ; and putting this aside, all who know the Khan Sahib 

 will, I know, agree with me that he is absolutely reliable. 



" He found all these eggs in July. 



" They were in each case laid on the bare ground in a very tri- 

 fling depression ; in one case in a perfectly bare plain, in another 

 in barren ground thinly studded with tufts of coarse withered 

 grass, and in the third in an undulating sandy tract, which might 



