474 THE LACCADIVES AND THE WEST COAST. 
markings are comparatively thinly sprinkled; in others, 
they are very dense. In some eggs, they are huge blotches 
and spots, and in these eggs the markings always predominate 
about the large end, where in some eggs there is a broad zone, 
in others, a huge more or less mottled cap. In other eggs the 
markings are almost entirely hieroglyphic-like lines, and in 
these eggs there is rarely any conspicuous cap or zone. 
Of 25 eggs which reached me, no two were very closely 
alike, and tor variety and richness of colouring, they surpass as 
a body, the eggs of any species with which 1 am acquainted. 
In length they vary from 2:3 to 2'-71; and in breadth, from 
1°63 to 1-78 ; but the average of two dozen was 2°45 by 1°71. 
990.—Sterna bengalensis, Less. See also S. F., Vol. I. 
p. 284. 
Of this species also we saw a large flock at Pere-Mull-Par, 
and a few individuals at Cherbaniani, but we met with it 
nowhere else. 
All the specimens obtained were in winter plumage, the en- 
tire forehead and lores pure white ; the crown, white; each of the 
feathers centered with a larger or smaller dot of blackish dus- 
ky ; and the occiput blackish dusky ; the feathers margined with 
white only ; a spot in front of the eye and a broad black line 
from behind eye joining into the crest along the base of the 
occiput, with the whole of this latter, velvet black. 
A female measured:—Length, 15’ -0 ; expanse, 35'"25 ; tail from 
vent, 5”°7; wing, 11’°3; tarsus, 1°0; mid toeand claw, 1°05; 
bill from gape, 2’°6; at front from margin of feathers, 1°93; 
weight, 8 ounces. The bill was pale orange, paler towards the 
tip ; legs and feet, black ; the soles of feet and lower surface of 
toes, dull orange. 
I have hitherto failed to discover any breeding place of this 
species (numerous as they must be) within our limits. 
992.—-Sterna anosthetus Scop. 
We found the Panayan Tern in enormous numbers at Char- 
baniani Reef, but did not meet with it elsewhere ; we shot about 
50 specimens, and preserved half this number. There were one 
or two young birds amongst them, in which a more or less light 
wood brown takes the place of the grayish smoky or sooty 
brown of the adult in winter plumage, but all the rest were 
adults in winter plumage ; on dissection they shewed no signs of 
breeding, and not one single specimen shewed any traces of the 
breeding plumage. The dessicated examples of adults that we 
picked up in the Vingorla rocks were, of course, in breeding 
plumage. 
