760 COTURNLX CHINENSIS. 



country ; and this dispersion is greatly assisted, and in many parts perhaps caused, by the heavy inundations 

 to which a great part of the country of Bengal is annually subjected. Mr. Mottley thus describes its habits in 

 Borneo. "After having been once flushed," he remarks, "these Quails fly a short distance and are difficult 

 to raise again, running with great rapidity among the grass." 



Nidification. — In the Colombo district the Chinese Quail breeds -in May, in which month I shot a 

 specimen with an egg in the oviduct almost ready for expulsion ; it was of a clear pale green colour devoid 

 of any markings, although it might perhaps have acquired colouring-matter afterwards. I am unable to give 

 any reliable information concerning the nesting of this bird, as but little is known about either its nest or 

 eggs, and the data which do exist supply rather conflicting evidence. Jerdon describes the eggs as pale 

 green ; and this bears out my own experience. Mr. Hume furnishes but scanty information in his useful 

 work ' Nests and Eggs,' referring only to a single egg which he received from Captain Hutton, and which is 

 described as a " broad oval in shape, much compressed and pointed towards the small end, and with a slight 

 pyriform tendency. The ground-colour is dingy greenish white, thinly speckled here and there with reddish 

 brown. Dimensions l - by - 78inch." 



Again, my correspondent Mr. Mac Vicar, of the Ceylon Public Works Department, informs me of a nest, 

 which he considers he satisfactorily identified, situated on the bund or embankment at the edge of a paddy- 

 field near Ksesbawa; it was made of grass and built in a hollow in the ground. The number of eggs was 

 seven, and in shape they were rather broad ovals, of a clear olive-colour, stippled throughout with dull brownish 

 specks. The dimensions of one I measured were DO by 096 inch. 



Finally we have a note of an egg supposed to belong to this species in Lord Walden and Mr. Edgar 

 Layard's paper on the birds of Negros ('Ibis/ 1872, p. 106), and which is as follows : — "A single egg of a 

 Quail we suppose to belong to this species. Mr. L. Layard describes the bird as not uncommon. The egg 

 is of a darkish brown generally, but irregularly speckled and blotched with very dark madder-brown specks 

 and blotches of various sizes : axis 12 lines (1-0 inch) ; diameter 9 lines (0 - 76)." It will be observed that the 

 size in the various accounts is about the same ; and this goes far to prove that the eggs have severally been 

 correctly identified, although they vary in colour. It is probable that Jerdon was misinformed as to the 

 exact character of the egg, and thus omitted mention of any markings ; whilst in the case of the one I 

 extracted from a specimen the coloration was not yet complete. 



