THE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 271 



Description. — Adult male. — Forehead brown, changing to black on 

 the crown and nape ; a rufous median stripe ; supercilium and sides 

 of the head white, fulvous white or pale fulvous, speckled with 

 brown and with broad brown bands running from the bores 

 and from under the ear coverts to the nape. Chin white, generally 

 unspeckled, sometimes faintly dotted with brown. Upper back and 

 scapulars velvety black, the former near the nape much marked 

 with rufous and the latter broadly edged with the same ; lower 

 back and rump duller black with rufous bars, more or less whitish 

 in front on the former ; upper tail coverts barred rufous and black- 

 ish brown, the former colour predominating. Central tail feathers 

 black with two rufous bars and tips, the subterminal bars very 

 broad; outer tail feathers barred dull white and black. Breast 

 fulvous, or fulvous white barred brown, remainder of lower parts, 

 including the abdomen, white barred closely with brown and with the 

 undertail coverts generally strongly tinged with rufous. Auxilia- 

 ries and underwing coverts dark brown with narrow white 

 bars. Wings brown, the coverts edged and barred with fulvous, the 

 primaries and primary coverts tipped with a pale edging, inner 

 secondaries barred throughout with fulvous or fulvous rufous. 



Irides dark brown, bill horny brown, more or less tinged with 

 green, the tip darker and the basal two-thirds of the lower mandi- 

 ble yellowish ; legs dark plumbeous green. 



Wing 5-25" to 5-75"; bill from gape 2-4" to 2-65"; tarsus 1-2" 

 to 1-5". 



Eliminating the largest and the smallest birds the tarsus 

 only varies between 1-3" and 1-4" and the extremes both ways are 

 probably abnormal. 



Adult female.— Does not differ from the male and is pro- 

 bably about the same in size or very little bigger, though with a 

 longer bill. The two longest bills I have personally measured 

 were 2-60" and 2-65" and both belonged to female birds. 



Young bird. — Judging from a single specimen of a young bird 

 in the Indian Museum with a wing of 5-02" and a bill of 2-38" it 

 would appear that in young birds the darker colours predominate 

 over the paler more than in the adult. The dark bars on the 

 lower plumage are distinctly broader and more close together, and 



