AKDEA. 



235 



The pores are more or less conspicuous in different specimens. 

 In some they are so numerous and closely set as to produce the 

 appearance of a faint white mottling over the whole of the egg, 

 while in others they are scarcely noticeable. 



In length the eggs vary from 2-08 to 2-48, and in breadth from 

 1'48 to 1'79 ; but the average of s-^ventyeggs is 2-27 by 1'66. 



Ardea purpurea, Linn. The Purple Heron. 



Ardea purpurea, I/inn., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 74-3 ; Hiime, Mouqh Draft 

 N. ^ E. no. 924. 



The Purple Heron breeds all ever the country wherever swamps 

 and rushy jheels are to be found. 



According to my personal experience it lays in July and August, 

 but in the neighbourhood of Saugor Mr. T. E. Blewitt obtained the 

 eggs in April, May, June, and July. 



I have seen now si)me hundreds of nests of this species, and 

 have invariably found them in thick beds of reeds and bulrushes. 



G-enerally from ten to thirty pairs build in the same spot, but 

 occasionally smaller parties are met with. I have never found 

 them nesting in company with other Herons, and in a large jheel 

 where I found both this species and the Night,-Heron breeding in 

 similar situations, the Mght-Herons had their clump to themselves 

 and the Purple Herons theirs. 



Four is the regular number of eggs, but I have repeatedly taken 

 five. 



The account given in the following old note that I extract from 

 my diary is pretty well equally applicable to all the many heronries 

 of this species that I have seen : — " On August 16th, 1867, when 

 Mr. Brooks and I were out egg-hunting in the Eta^'ah District, 

 we came across a large heronry of this species near the Lohya 

 Bridge of the Ganges Canal. 



" In the midst of a large jheel or swamp, in many places grown 

 up with rushes and wild rice, in others with deep and comparatively 

 clear water thickly paved with leaves of the lotus and water-lily, 

 stood two large dense clumps of bulrushes. As we passed within 

 about a hundred yards of these, firing once or twice at Ducks, 

 jNukhtahs, Grrey Ducks, and the lesser Whistling Teals, we saw 

 some thirty or forty long necks make their appearance among the 

 waving tops of the bulrushes. It was quite clear that the owners 

 of the necks must be standing on something well above the level of 

 the water, and so we at once sent men to search the clumps, — no 

 easy matter as it proved. It turned out that tliese Herons, by 

 bending doivn thirty or forty of the rushes crossing each other in 

 all directions, had made small platforms from eighteen inches to 

 two feet above the water, and on them had built their nests. 



" The nests were large, from two to two and a half feet in diam- 

 eter, loose flat structures, composed of sticks and twigs of the 

 babool and sheeshum (which composed the bulk of the neighbour- 



