SYPHEOTIS. 379 



have grown up. Even in the season of love the intercourse of the 

 sexes among adults is quite transitory, and is conducted without 

 any of that jealousy and pugnacity which so eminently distinguish 

 niost birds at that period. 



" In the season of love the troops of males and females come 

 into the same neigbbourhood, but without mixing. A male that 

 is amorously disposed steps forth, and, by a variety of very 

 singular proceedings quite analogous to human singing and dancing, 

 recommends himself to the neighbouring bevy of females. lie 

 rises perpendicularly in the air, humming in a deep peculiar tone 

 and llapping his wings. He lets himself sink after he has risen 

 some fifteen or twenty yards ; and again he rises and again falls in 

 the same manner, and with the same strange utterance ; and thus 

 perhaps five or six times, when one of the females steps forward, 

 and with her he commences a courtship in the manner of a Turkey 

 cock, by trailing his wings and rising and spreading his tail, hum- 

 ming all the time as before. 



" When thus, with what I must call song and dance, the rites 

 of Hymen have been duly performed, the male retires to his 

 company and the female to hers ; nor is there any appearance (I 

 have at some cost had the birds watched most closely) of further 

 or more enduring intimacy between the sexes than that just 

 recorded, nor any evidence that the male ever lends his aid to the 

 female in the tasks of incubation and of rearing the young. 



" The procreative instinct having been satisfied, the female 

 retires into deep grass-cover, and there, at the root of a thick tuft 

 of grass with very little semblance of a nest, she deposits two eggs, 

 ne\er more or less, unless the first be destroyed. If the eggs be 

 handled in her absence, she is sure to discover it and destroy them 

 herself. The eggs are of the size and shape of an ordinary 

 domestic Powl's, but one sensibly larger and more richly coloured 

 than the other. This larger and more highly tinted egg is that of 

 the male young, the smaller and less richly hued egg that of the 

 female progeny. 



" The female sits on her eggs about a month, and the young can 

 follow her \ery soon after they chip the egg. In a month they 

 are able to fly ; and they remain with the mother for nearly a year, 

 or tUl the procreative impulse again is felt by her, when she drives 

 offi the long-since fully-grown young. Two females commonly 

 breed near each other, whether for company or mutual aid and 

 help ; and thus the coveys (so to speak, though they are not 

 literally such) are usually found to consist of four to six birds. 

 The Florican breeds but once a year, in June-July, that is, the eggs 

 are then laid, and the young batched in July- August. 



" The eggs, about the size of those of a Bantam, 2 inches long 

 by 1 g inch broad, are of a sordid stramineous hue, very minutely 

 dotted and more largely blotched and clouded with black, some- 

 what as in Lohivanellus goensix or the Indian Lapwing." 



According to his manuscript notes, the Florican breeds freely in 

 the Terai below the Sikhim and Nepal hills. They lay from the 

 middle of May to the middle of July, and lay two eggs, which aie 



