294 Mr. D. Seth-Smith,


families and always on the ground, unless when disturbed or

alarmed ; it then usually flies into the nearest tree, generally

choosing the largest part of a horizontal branch to perch upon.

When it rises from the ground its flight is accompanied with a

louder flapping or burring noise than I have observed in any

other Pigeon.


" Its note is a coo, so rolled out that it generally resembles

the note of the Quail, and which, like that bird, it scarcely ever

utters but when on the ground, where it frequently remains

stationary, allowing itself to be almost trod upon before rising.

Its favourite haunts are meadows covered with short grass near

water, or the edges of newly burnt brush. It would seem that

this species migrates occasionally from one part of the country

to another ; for during the mouths of September and October not

a single individual was to be seen, while at the time of my arrival

and for a month after they were so abundant that it was a com-

mon and daily occurrence for persons to leave the settlement for

an hour or two and return with several brace ; in the latter part

of November they again appeared but were not so numerous as

before ; and in the January and February following they were

rarely to be met with, and then mostly in pairs, inhabiting the

long grasses clothing the moister parts of the meadows.


" It incubates from August to October, making no nest,

but merely smoothing down a small part of a clump of grass and

forming a slight hollow, in which it deposits two eggs, which are

greenish white, one inch and a quarter long by seven-eighths of

an inch in breadth. The young bird on emerging from the egg

is clothed with down like the young of the Quail."


The last sentence in the above interesting notes has given

rise to a mistaken idea that Geophaps is much more closely allied

to the game-birds than other Pigeons, and should therefore be

classed with these.


In his paper " A Review of Recent Attempts to Classify

Birds," read before the International Ornithological Congress at

Budapest in 1891, Dr. Bowdler Sharpe proposed to separate the

pigeons belonging to this genus from the true Pigeons and

associate them with the Turnices, an arrangement which would

not meet with the support of those who know these birds in a



