364 PTEEOCLID^E. 



white ; in some pale cafe-au-lait, in others a somewhat light olive- 

 brown. Typically they are thickly spotted, streaked, or irregularly 

 blotched, pretty uniformly over the whole surface, with two sets of 

 markings the one of darker or lighter shades of olive-brown, the 

 other a sort of pale inky purple, and these latter, which are most 

 commonly streaks and clouds, seem to underlie the others. 

 Different eggs vary much in the distribution, size, and intensity 

 of these markings, as also in the relative proportion of the extent 

 of surface covered respectively with what I may call the primary 

 and secondary markings : in some almost the whole ground-colour 

 not occupied by the primary markings is clouded with the pale inky 

 purple, in others only here and there a few spots of this colour are 

 traceable ; in some all the markings are small, very thickly set, and 

 f reckly, in others they are bold, large, eccentrically-shaped blotches, 

 comparatively thinly distributed over the surface. Some of the eggs 

 are, as a whole, very much darker-coloured than others, and in some 

 the ground-colour might perhaps be best described as a faintly 

 greenish grey. As a rule, the paler the ground the paler the 

 markings and vice versa. Exceptionally beautifully marbled eggs 

 are met with, as also unmottled pale creamy varieties. I have 

 never, however, seen one that could be mistaken for an egg of 

 P. fasciatus. 



The eggs vary in length from 1-32 to 1-6, and in breadth from 

 0-95 to 1*11 ; but the average of seventy eggs is 1-45 by 1-03. 



Pterocles fasciatus (Scop.). The Painted Sand-Grouse. 



Pterocles fasciatus (Scop.}. Jerd. JB. Ind. ii, p. 498 ; Hume, Rourih 

 Draft N. # .& no. 800. 



The Painted Sand-Grouse belongs especially to the low ranges of 

 rocky and more or less barren hills that are scattered about the 

 continent of India, and I have never observed them more than a 

 few miles or so away from the base of these. Throughout the so- 

 called Mewat Hills and the Aravallis which run down from Delhi 

 to Mount Aboo, a broad straggling broken belt of stony, detached, 

 and often barrow-like hills, they are common. In the low bare hills 

 of the ]S"orth-west Punjab, about the barer parts of the Sewaliks, 

 and on the stony ridges and (during part of the year) the forests of 

 the Central Provinces, they are tolerably abundant, and in all these 

 localities they are permanent residents and, to the best of my belief, 

 breed. 



Most of the numerous eggs that I have received have been found 

 in April and May, but the nearly allied P. exustus breeds so irre- 

 gularly and at such different periods that it is very probable that 

 the breeding-season of the present species also varies much and is 

 not by any means confined to these two months ; indeed, Mr. E. 

 Thompson took a nest near Chandah on the 28th November ; and 

 again Colonel Butler, of Her Majesty's 83rd Eegiment, writing from 

 Mount Aboo, remarks : " I shot a pair of Painted Sand-Grouse, 



