SYPHEOTIS. 381 



by the bird for any purpose, as it had of being simply scraped away 

 from the actual sitting place. The nest contained three eggs." 



He now (Xovember 1874) writes to me : " My Phansee Pardees 

 (native fowlers) found the first nest (if it can be so called) of the 

 season on loth September, with one egg ; an egg was added on the 

 16th, and another on 17th ; and on the 19th, finding no more eggs, 

 I shot the male and female, and took the eggs. 1 send them to 

 you, together with the skins of two other birds, and another batch 

 of four eggs taken from another nest on the 5th October. The last 

 nest I have heard of being found was taken on the 27th October, 

 but I could not unfortunately procure the eggs. 



" The nest taken on the 19th September was the only one which 

 I had an opportunity of watching. The eggs were deposited on 

 the bare ground, which was perfectly level (without the least signs 

 even of scratching), in some thin scanty grass about 2 feet high, 

 and about 2 yards in from the edge of the grass-patch. Xot a 

 hundred yards from the plot of grass in which the eggs were 

 deposited is a Kurdn (or preserve), over half a mile long by quarter 

 broad, of very high dense grass, a far more likely place, one would 

 have thought, for so wary a bird to lay its eggs. 



" On the 16th, I went out and watched this bird for more than 

 an hour, just about the time at which she had been flushed oil the 

 morning before from the single egg. Prom the tree on which I 

 sat, with my binoculars, I saw her running rapidly out of the 

 dense Kurdn, across the open and into the scanty patch in which 

 was her egg. Here she moved about for some minutes feeding, 

 and every now and then she sprung into the air with a low 

 clucking cry, which was answered by the male bird from the dense 

 Kurdn, though at first I could not see him. Then, as though a 

 sudden thought had struck her, she darted to her nest, and after 

 one or two springs and walking round and round the egg, she 

 squatted and deposited another. While she sat, she was quite 

 silent, but the male bird who, had now advanced closer to me, kept 

 springing in the air and crying continually. The operation of laying 

 the egg seemed to last about twenty minutes i. e., from the time 

 she sat to the time she rose ; and having made another spring or 

 two, walked round the eggs and then made straight tracks for the 

 dense grass where the male bird was calling. 



" I went out quite alone on this watching expedition and all was 

 quite quiet, and the birds were at their ease ; but while I was still 

 in the tree a man came into the Kurdn with some cattle, and then 

 I saw both birds spring several times silently, and after that I saw 

 or heard nothing of them." 



Mr. J. Davidson tells us that " the Florican breeds all round 

 Sholapoor in considerable numbers, wherever there are Kurdns 

 (grass preserves) with long grass. During the breeding-season they 

 seem chiefly to haunt the thinnest patches of long grass, rather than 

 those full of small bushes ; they are at this period exceedingly 

 difficult to flush, particularly the hens, which, even if you succeed 

 in forcing them to rise, get up only at your very feet and make but 

 very short flights. The cocks are not quite so difficult to flush, 



