376 OTIDID^E. 



as the first half of September. The eggs are placed on the 

 ground, at the base of some bush or tuft of grass, in a small 

 depression, generally unlined, often thinly lined with a few 

 straggling blades of grass. The situation varies : sometimes the 

 nest is in an open waste, sparsely dotted with a few herbaceous 

 shrubs, often in the stubble of the giant and bulrush millets, and 

 still more often in clumps and patches of high thatching-grass, or 

 the dense soft lemon-grass so characteristic of the favourite haunts 

 alike of this Bustard and the Houbara. 



My impression is that the birds lay only one egg. But some- 

 times two eggs are found pretty close together, and either the 

 females not unfrequently lay very close to each other, or when a 

 female does lay more than one egg she deposits the second some 

 little distance away from the first. Khan Nizam-oo-deen Khan 

 has taken more than a hundred of these eggs with his own hand, 

 and he never found two eggs side by side. Where, as not unfre- 

 quently happens, two are within a yard or two of each other, he 

 believes that they belong to different birds, and that this is a fact 

 he has in one or two cases proved by snaring both females. I have 

 only myself seen three nests, each containing a single egg. I 

 can, therefore, say nothing positive on this subject. 



Khan Nizam-oo-deen Khan gives the following, which I trans- 

 late, in regard to the dates on, and places in, which he found the 

 eggs of this species in 1869 : 



" The first nest, containing two eggs, was found on 30th June. 

 The eggs were discovered in waste ground, rather high and dry, 

 dotted over with tufts of a species of lemon-grass. The eggs were 

 overhung by one of these tufts, but, curiously enough, one egg was 

 on one side, and the other egg was on the other side of the tuft. 



" On the 1st July two nests, each containing one egg ; these 

 were both in waste land, thickly covered with the plants of the 

 lana (Anabasis multiflora). 



" Another nest, containing one egg, was found on the 3rd July 

 amongst tufts of the lemon-grass. 



" Another nest on the 6th July, also containing one egg, was 

 found under a lana-bush in some high, somewhat stony waste land, 

 thickly dotted with lemon-grass tufts. 



" Another nest, containing one egg, was taken on the 10th July, 

 the egg being placed under a solitary lana-bush in perfectly level, 

 open ground. Other nests were taken from similar situations. 



" On the llth July one egg. 



" On the 27th and 30th July and the 23rd August in each one 

 egg, and on the 10th and 27th of August nests, each containing 

 two eggs ; in each of these latter cases the two eggs being found at 

 some little distance from each other. 



" It seems very doubtful whether these two eggs in any case 

 belonged to the same bird. In one case doubtless the eggs were 

 only on different sides of a large tuft of grass, but in the other 

 instances in which two eggs were found in the same locality they 

 were several yards apart." 



He also sends this further memorandum of eggs found in 

 1870: 



