532 Mr. J. 0. Bcven on the 



The eggs are rather large for the size of the bird, markedly 

 pointed at one end, and of a reddish-buff colour, Avith large 

 spots and splashes of black. 



Darwin mentions it as a possibility that the cock bird may 

 hear the onus of incubation^ as well as performing the duties 

 of '^ childward care." Legge, Jerdon, and others cite the 

 same possibility, quoting the general femininity of the cock 

 bird as an argument in its favour. 



My own observations are that the male does incubate the 

 eggs ; but whether this is the invarial)le rule, and whether 

 the hen takes any share in the task, I cannot definitely say, 

 though the evidence seems against the latter probability. 



On the second occasion on which I obtained the eggs of 

 this species, I was walking through a particular field for the 

 third time in a quarter of an hour, when a Painted Snipe, 

 a cock bird, rose a couple of feet in front of me. No sooner 

 had I shot the bird than it struck me that it might have risen 

 off a nest, and, on looking in the place which the bird had 

 just left, I found a nest with four eggs which were quite 

 warm. On this occasion the hen bird was nowhere in the 

 vicinity; at any rate, I did not succeed in flushing her in 

 spite of much tramping about. 



This absence of the hen, which I have always observed 

 when I have found the cock with either eggs or young birds, 

 is the more strange in view of the fact that at other times 

 the birds are almost invariably found in pairs. 



On a second occasion I was taken to a nest containing 

 eggs by a " Snipe- boy," who said that it had been found the 

 previous day by a party of reapers, and the hen refusing to 

 leave the nest one of them had killed her. Enquiries proved 

 that what the boy called *^Mvirichi " ('^jcn") was, in all 

 probability, the less brilliant cock bird, to judge from his 

 description. Too much reliance must not, however, be 

 placed in this instance, as the native ideas of colour are 

 notoriously vague and unreliable. 



In every case in which I have come upon the young birds 

 they have been in the care of their male parent, the hen 

 beinof either not in the neighbourhood at all or else some 



