THE ISLANDS OF THE BAY OF BENGAL. 281 



soubriquet was, interpreted, the men with us had, during the 

 previous month, taken at one time some 20 eggs out of one 

 and the same monnd, which also they took us to see, and 

 which was perhaps 5 feet high and 16 or 18 feet in diameter, 

 and which was the freshest looking I had seen. 



The eggs are excessively elongated ovals, enormously large 

 for the size of the bird. They vary a great deal in size, and a 

 good deal in shape : all are much elongated, but some are more 

 like turtle's eggs than those of a bird. When first laid they 

 are of a uniform ruddy pink, as we know from having 

 obtained one before the bird had time even to bury it ; after 

 being buried, so long as the egg remains quite fresh, it con- 

 tinues a pale pink, but as the chicken developes within, the 

 egg becomes a buffy stone color, and when near about hatching 

 it is a very pale yellowish brown. The whole coloring matter 

 is contained in an excessively thin chalky flake, which is easily 

 scraped off, having a pure white chalky shell below ; this outer 

 colored coat seems to have a great tendency to flake off in spots, 

 specks, and even large blotches, as the chicken is developed 

 within. Quite fresh laid eggs rarely exhibit any white marks 

 of any kind, while those more or less approaching hatching 

 (one cannot say incubated in this case) are invariably more 

 or less mottled with white. Occasionally fairly fresh eggs are 

 dug out, bearing along their entire length on one side two 

 parallel white lines made apparently by the claws of the 

 mother bird when scraping the sand over them. The eggs 

 are always a little pointed towards one end, and some, especi- 

 ally the less cylindrical ones, are conspicuously so. The shell 

 is entirely devoid of gloss, and the surface is everywhere 

 roughened with innumerable minute pores which occur equally 

 in the exterior colored flake, and the white somewhat less 

 chalky shell beneath. 



In length the eggs vary from 3*01 to 3*4, and in breadth 

 from T90 to 2-25, but the average of 62 eggs that I have 

 carefully measured is o"25 by 2'07. 



834— Turnix joudera, Hodg.? albiventris, 

 Hume. (3.) Stray Feathers, 1873, p. 310. 



Whether the little Turnix, which is found alike in the Anda- 

 mans and Nicobars, should be considered a distinct species, 

 I am not as yet in a position to decide. To do this one would 

 require to compare an enormous series of joudera and macu- 

 losus, Temm. Of the latter I have only one specimen, a male 

 with a wing four inches ; of the former only five with wings 



