358 BIRDS OCCURRING IN INDIA NOT DESCRIBED 



brown blotches or irregular stripes or spots towards the tips, 

 confined in the aigrettes to the outer webs ; in some specimens 

 these dark brown spots are peculiarly conspicuous on the tips of 

 the comparatively unmarked feathers, which form the irregular 

 half collar already referred to ; the outer webs of the quills 

 hare the same ground colour, but as usual, palest on the first 

 few primaries, with five or six broad irregular mottled and im- 

 perfect transverse brown bars, which are continued as perfect 

 bars on to the inner webs, where the interspaces are much 

 mottled, and instead of having the clear fawn coloured or buffy 

 tint of the outer webs are much suffused with brown, and 

 towards the bases become almost obsolete ; the outer webs of 

 the secondaries also have the buffy portions much freckled and 

 mottled with brown ; the tail might perhaps be best described 

 as brown, with five or six imperfect and irregular transverse 

 rufous fawn bars; the interspaces much freckled with the 

 same colour, the brown predominating at the bases, the rufous 

 fawn towards the tips ; the throat and feathers of the ruff are 

 white, suffused with rufous fawn towards the tips, those of the 

 throat with two or three very narrow transverse brown bars 

 towards the end, and those of the ruff broadly blotched at the 

 tips with deep brown ; the breast and the abdomen are white, 

 pale yellowish or rufous white, closely but irregularly barred 

 with delicate, wavy brown lines, and many of the feathers with 

 irregular dark brown shaft stripes or lengthened blotches ; the 

 vent feathers and lower tail-coverts are white with, in most 

 specimens, one or more imperfect bars at the tip ; the tibial 

 and tarsal plumes are similar, but the former are generally 

 much more rufous, and the latter more purely white than the 

 ground colour of the breast, and the markings always coarser 

 than those of that part are in some specimens, close and regular, 

 in others mere spots. 



This species is always paler and more rufous or more buffy 

 than the next (E. plumipes), and the dark blotches of the head, 

 back, ruff and lower parts are always smaller and much less 

 conspicuous, but, inter se, the specimens of this present species 

 vary good deal in general tone of colouring, some being 

 decidedly browner, some more rufous, and some more buffy.— 

 Hume, i( Rough Notes.'" 



75 bis.— Scops plumipes, Hume. 



Dimensions. — Length, 9'5 to 10 ; expanse, 20 ; wing, 67 to 

 7 '3 ; tail, 3 ; exterior tail feathers, 02 to 0*4 shorter than the 



