174 THE INDIAN BUSTARD-QUAIL. 



finding of their nests during July and August. This too is the 

 season in which they lay in Guzerat, and it was during these 

 months that Colonel Tickell says he had eggs brought him in 

 Purulia (Western Bengal). Mr. W. Theobald found the nest 

 at Monghyr in the first week in June. In the Panch Mahals 

 Mr. Davidson took a nest with four hard-set eggs in the middle 

 of November. Two nests were sent me from Salem taken in 

 August. Jerdon says : — 



" In the Carnatic this bird breeds from July to September, 

 further south from June to August, and in Ceylon, says Layard, 

 from February to August." 



Sometimes this species makes no nest at all, and merely 

 scratches a hollow at the base of, or in the midst of, some tuft 

 of Sirpatta grass, or occasionally some little dense bush adjoin- 

 ing or surrounded by long grass. Sometimes it makes a little 

 pad of grass, rather soft dry grass, three, or at most four, inches in 

 diameter and half an inch in thickness, which it places as a lining 

 to the hollow. Now and then I am informed that, when laying 

 during heavy rain, it constructs a sort of hood or dome over the 

 nest. 



Generally, it does scratch a hollow for itself, but at times 

 natural hollows or the hoof-prints of cattle are accepted 

 and used, with or without a lining, without so much as a trace 

 of the lazy little bird's feet being visible. I surprised a female, 

 conspicuous by her black throat and breast, in the act of 

 scratching a nest hole — a hole she laid in next day — and I there- 

 fore believe the native account, which attributes the construction of 

 the nest to the hen ; but when they continue that, as soon as the 

 clutch is complete, the female drives the reluctant male on to 

 the eggs, and thereafter gives him a tremendous thrashing if 

 ever she catches him away from these, I am bound to say that 

 I suspend my opinion. True, an old Mughul Shikari, whom I 

 employed when I was in the Meerut district, used to aver that 

 he had often watched the males feeding near their nests rush 

 on to the eggs at the sound of the females' call, and sit there, 

 looking as if they had not left the nest for at least a week, 

 until the female appeared, walked once or twice round the nest, 

 and strutted off again, calling vociferously, as much as to say 

 " Lucky for you it's all right, my little friend !" But this old 

 ruffian was one who held that 



" A spaniel, a woman, a walnut tree, 



The more you whap'em the better they be ;" 



and these reminiscences of his, chiefly narrated (and per- 

 haps concocted) in view to impressing on my youthful mind 

 a wholesome lesson as to the lengths to which the female sex, 

 if not kept under proper restraint, is apt to stray, must assuredly 

 be set down as " requiring confirmation." 



There is no doubt that the normal number of the eggs is four ; 

 out of thirty-odd nests examined by myself and others, only 



