THE WOODCOCK. 321 
and smears, secondary sub-surface-looking markings, rarely 
either large or thickly set, except when amongst the blotches 
of a zone or cap, when the egg exhibits such. 
The eggs vary a great deal in size and shape, some being much 
more round than others—indeed, almost spherical, the major axis 
only exceeding the minor by one-eighth, and others comparative- 
ly elongated, the major axis exceeding the minor by nearly one- 
fourth. 
A large series, chiefly Northern European, vary from 1°5 to 
1°8 in length, and from 1°3 to 1°5 in breadth. I have no Hima- 
layan eggs, but I suspect that, like the birds, they would average 
smaller than European specimens. 
ACCORDING TO European writers, age for age, the females are 
larger than the males, and the youngest birds have the shortest 
bills; the latter is undoubted. As to the former, my measure- 
ments do not establish any constant difference between the 
sexes. I have the exact measurements recorded in the flesh 
of over fifty Indian-killed specimens, carefully noted by Hodgson, 
Scully, C. H. T. Marshall, Butler and myself; and these, I 
think, show our birds to be smaller than European ones, and 
they show absolutely no constant difference in the size of the 
sexes. The followingis an abstract of all these measurements :— 
Length, 13 to 15°0; expanse, 23:0 to 25°5; wing, 7:2 to 8:0; 
tail from vent, 3:0 to 3°85; tarsus, 1°35 to 1°57; bill from gape, 
2°8 to 3°3; weight, 7 ozs. to 12°5 ozs. 
In not one out of 53 birds has the wing exceeded 8 inches. In 
my only Yarkand specimen it is 8°5, and it exceeds 8 inches in 
every one of five English specimens. 
Inonlyfive out of 53 birds has the weight exceeded 10 ozs., 
and these five the weights were—I0‘'5, 11°5, 12°0, 12:0, and 12°5 
ozs. Outof 53% couple shot during three days, at the late Mr. 
O’Leary’s place, at Cool Mountain,* near the Inchigeela Lakes, 
between Macroom and Bantry (South-West Ireland), 27 weighed 
between I2and 14 ozs., six weighed between 14 and 15 ozs., and 
one between 15 and 160zs. Dresseragain says that, in alarge series 
shot between 1860 and 1870 at Gartincaber in Perthshire, most 
of the birds varied in weight between 11 and I20zs. Our 53 
birds weighed—between 7 and 8 ozs., fourteen—between 8 and 
9 ozs., eighteen—g and I0 ozs., sixteen—above I0 ozs, five. 
There is an undoubted instance on record of a Woodcock in 
England weighing 27 ozs. 
Our only Yarkand bird has the wing 8°5, and it seems to me 
therefore, probable, that if India was visited by many Central 
* People rave about the cock-shooting on the coast opposite to Corfu, and 
thirty to forty years ago it used tobe, and, for all I know still is, very fine; but 
every bit as good cock-shooting was to be had, as late at any rate as 1861, at Eve 
Leary in county ‘‘ Kark” ! 
RoE 
