GALLICIiEX 387 



Mr. W. Theobald makes the folio wiug remarks oil the nidifica- 

 tion of the Common Coot in the Valley of Cashmere : " Lays in 

 the second week of May. Eggs, eight in number, long ovato-pyri- 

 form. JSi/o, -'I by 1-4. Colour, pale brownish grey, dotted with 

 reddish black. Wullur Lake. Nest, pieces of dried reeds, about 

 6 inches long, piled together among reed, and floating on the 

 water." 



Long ago Lieutenant Burgess wrote : " I found some of these 

 birds breeding on the Singwa Tank, situate about eighteen miles 

 north of the station of Ahmednuggur. On the 21st August, 1849, 

 I obtained three eggs. 



44 The egg is rather more than 2-1 in length by nearly 1-5 in 

 width, of a stone-colour, spotted with numberless small specks of 

 brown and some larger spots of dark brown and grey." 



Colonel Butler writes : " A nest in a tank near Belgaum, 28th 

 July, 1879, containing seven slightly incubated eggs." 



The eggs of this species vary very greatly in size and shape, but 

 are very uniform in coloration and character and size of markings. 

 As to shape, they are perhaps typically somewhat broad ovals, 

 slightly compressed towards one end ; but eggs pointed towards 

 both ends seem common. 



The eggs have little or no gloss. The ground-colour is a pale 

 buffy stone-colour or dull cafe-au-lait, and the whole surface is 

 closely and evenly stippled over with minute black or blackish- 

 brown pin-point specks ; besides these a few larger specks and 

 spots (few, if any, exceeding the size of a common pin's head) 

 are scattered sparingly about the surface. 



The eggs vary from 1'78 to 2*3 in length, and from 1-25 to 1*5 

 in breadth ; but the average of fifty eggs is 1*98 by 1*4. 



Gallicrex cinereus (Gmel.). The Water-code. 



Gallicrex cristatus (Lath.}, Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 716. 



Gallicrex cinereus (Gm.\ Hume, Rough Draft N. 8f E. no. 904. 



The Water-Cock, so far as our Indian Empire is concerned, is, 

 I think, restricted to tracts where the rainfall is not less than 40 

 inches and where night frosts are unknown. 



It is common on the western coast of the Peninsula, in the 

 eastern portions of the Central Provinces, and in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Mahanuddy, throughout Lower Bengal, and all the 

 better- watered countries eastward to Formosa, throughout Arakan, 

 Lower Pegu, and Tenasserim, and in the Andamans and Ceylon; 

 but it is almost unknown in the drier portions of the centre of the 

 Peninsula, Behar, and the Xorth-West Provinces (except in the 

 sub-Himalayan zone), the Punjab, Eajpootana, and Sind. 



It is only in Lower Bengal that I have seen the nests ; here 

 they breed in July and August in swamps and rice-fields, making 

 sometimes a large Coot-like nest of flags and rice-straw in the 

 midst of a dense tangled mass of reeds, rush, and water-weeds, 



25* 



