EUPLOCAMCTS. 413 



in, and would rummage along the ledges and turn them out, when, 

 after a few strong strokes outwards from the face of the cliff, they 

 would all but close their wings and come down past me (I always 

 stood in the same place on a knoll at the foot of the cliff where I 

 was safe from stones) like lightning. I remember well missing 

 every single shot the first day, but the next time I got a brace and 

 after that I never went home without one or two, and, strange to 

 say, my weekly and sometimes bi-weekly visits never had the effect 

 of driving them away, and, what is more, in Octob* r 1860, when I 

 again visited the place, I found my friends in their old locality, and 

 got three brace then and there. 



I found another nest with several eggs late in May, in a very 

 similar situation, on Nagtiber, at, I suppose, an elevation of about 

 6000 feet ; and a third, containing four eggs, which I took early in 

 May, a few miles from Juggutsook, in the upper valley of the Beas. 

 This, too, was similarly situated. 



Mr. Wilson, quoted by Dr. Jerdon, tells us that " the female 

 makes her nest in the grass or amongst low bushes, and lays from 

 nine to fourteen eggs of a dull white, and rather small for so large 

 a bird. They are hatched about the end of May or beginning of 

 June. Both male and female keep with the young brood and 

 seem very solicitous for their welfare." 



The eggs are, as remarked by l Mountaineer,' very small for the 

 size of the bird. They are of a very pale stone-colour or a dingy, 

 slightly cafe-au-lait tinted white. They are almost devoid of mark- 

 ings, but towards one or other end many specimens exhibit small 

 somewhat pale brownish-red specks and spots ; and one or two 

 that I have seen have had a good number of very minute specks of 

 the same colour scattered about the surface. They altogether want 

 the warm cafe-au-lait tint of those of the Moonal, Koklass, and 

 the Kalij, and laid beside these eggs they seem to have a slightly 

 greenish tint. In shape they resemble an ordinary hen's egg, and 

 are not at all, as might have been expected, like those of P. col- 

 chicus. The shell has a slight gloss, but it exhibits throughout the 

 minute pits or pores so characteristic of Easorial eggs, in a much 

 less degree no doubt than those of the Peacock and others, but in 

 a greater degree than those of the Koklass. 



They appear very uniform in size ; at any rate the specimens I 

 have only vary from 2'05 to 2*22 in length, and from 1*47 to 1/56 

 in breadth. 



Euplocamus albicristatns (Vig.)- The White-crested Kalij. 



Gallophasis albocristatus ( F^.), Jerd. B. 2nd. ii, p. 532 ; Hume, 

 Rough Draft N. $ E. no. 810. 



The White-crested Kalij breeds everywhere in the Himalayas 

 south of the first Snowy Eanges (and occasionally in the Dhoons 

 and Terais that fringe their bases), from the borders of Afghanistan 

 to Nepal. 



