THE ISLANDS OF THE BAY OF BENGAL. 275 



nests contained young,- and hundreds of young had left the nest, 

 I only succeeded in finding two eggs, one partially incubated, 

 the other ready to hatch off; the former of these unfortunately 

 got broken on the island, the latter I succeeded in preserving 

 by cutting a hole in one side, and then placing the egg in a 

 small paper tray near an ants' nest. The nests were, as I have 

 mentioned above, regular pigeons' nests, merely a platform of 

 twigs, very closely and carelessly put together, and without 

 lining of any kind, and in no single case contained more than 

 one young one or one egg, so I think we may safely assert 

 that the normal number of eggs laid by this bird is only one. 

 Many of the nests I examined contained young oues only a 

 day or two old, perfectly devoid of even down and with closed 

 eyes, in fact exactly like the young of the domestic pigeon when 

 first hatched ; other nests contained young that flew from 

 the nest on our climbing the tree. One nest I found was 

 only about 10 feet, but the others ranged from twenty to 

 thirty from the ground, and were always placed in thick 

 bushy trees. 



ei On the other islands that we visited in which this bird 

 occurs, I could learn nothing about whether they bred there or 

 not, except on Katchall, where a native told me that they built 

 on trees, but he could neither get me the eggs nor could he 

 even give me a description of them, or of the number laid, 

 probably it was merely a good guess of his that they built in 

 trees, and that they do not really build on Katchall Island, 

 but all resort to Batty Malve to breed. I certainly never met 

 with any but adult birds on the other islands where they 

 occur ; but again on the other hand, while most of the birds 

 were breeding on Batty Malve, some few others, at any rate, 

 were to be found on Katchall, Treis, Track, &c. 



" The stomachs of all those I shot on Katchall contained 

 seeds very similar to a prune stone, more or less broken up, 

 but on Batty Malve they seemed to have eaten a whitish seed 

 about the size of the head of a blanket pin. The gizzard of 

 this bird is very peculiar, being composed of two discs of 

 cartilage hard as and of the same texture as bone, slightly 

 convex on the inner surface, between which is a single pebble 

 usually of white quartz a little larger than a fresh pea. 



" I may here mention that the figure of this bird given in 

 ' CasselFs Book of Birds,' Vol III, p. 168, is a capital one, and 

 well represents the attitude of the bird when at rest, but it 

 should have been sitting on a branch, instead of on the 

 ground ; too much of the tail is exposed, the bird naturally carries 

 its wing lower, so that only a very little of the tail is exposed. 



