370 TTJENIOIDiE. 



Turnix tanki, Buch. Ham. The Larger Button-Quail. 



Turiiix dussumieri, Temm., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 599. 



Turnix joudera, Hodgs., Hume, Rough Draft N. Sf E. no. 834. 



Of the nidification of the Larger Button-Quail I know notliiiig 

 personally. 



Captain Oldham, of the 12th Eegiment, long ago sent me an 

 egg with the following note : — " I took the egg from the body of 

 a Larger Button-Quail. This Quail I shot with others on the 26th 

 of this month (August), near this station (Sealkote) in fields of 

 Indian-corn and cotton." 



Mr. IverMacpherson, writing from Mysore, says : — " 29th April, 

 1880. While weeding in last year's teak-plantations on the 27th, 

 the weeders found two Quails' nests, each with four eggs. 



" The eggs were according to orders left untouched, and today 

 I visited the plantations and shot the bird off one nest, which proved 

 to be a Larger Button-Quail. The eggs were hard-set. 



" Duricg the few days I remained out, several young birds of 

 this species were caught." 



These four eggs measured from 0'9 to 0"98 in length by 0'72 to 

 0'73 in breadth. 



Colonel Butler writes : — " The Large Button-Quail breeds in the 

 neighbourhood of Deesa during the rains. I found a nest on the 

 15th July, 1875, containing four slightly incubated eggs; it was 

 composed of soft blades of dry grass, reminding one of the nest of 

 a field-mouse and many half-covered nests which I have seen of 

 Mirafra cantillans, the entrance-hole being on one side. It was 

 placed at the foot of a tussock of coarse gi-ass in a preserve, and 

 the old bird allowed me to put my foot within a few inches of her 

 before she flew off. After leading the nest she fluttered along the 

 ground for four or five yards and then feigned lameness, broken 

 wings, &c., like other members of the family. I snared her at the 

 nest when she returned shortly afterwards. The eggs are very 

 handsome and considerably smaller than those of the Bustard- 

 Quail : they are of a dirty yellowish-white colour, thickly speckled, 

 spotted, and blotched all over with brownish black, with occasional 

 spots and markings of inky purple and palish or dingy yellow, the 

 whole combining in forming quite a dark confluent cap at the large 

 end. The eggs are highly glossed and much the same shape as the 

 eggs of T. taigoor, being very broad and almost round at the large 

 end, small and pointed at the other. One or two hen birds which 

 I shot later on in the same month would have laid in a few days 

 had they not been destroyed." 



One of these eggs measured 0'84 by 0'63. 



The egg from Sealkote, which was extracted from the oviduct of 

 the parent bird, is of the ordinary Turnix type. In shape it is a 

 very broad oval, but pointed towards one end ; in fact three 

 fourths of the egg are spherical, the remaining quarter is, as it 

 Mere, pinched out into a point, and this is not an uncommon shape 

 amongst the eggs of this genus. The shell is glossless. The 



