330 THE WOOD-SNIPE. 
they lay four eggs, a good deal recalling some varieties of those 
of the Great and Common Snipe. 
In shape they are broad at one end, very narrow at the other, 
almost hemispherical, in the larger half, and abruptly compressed 
from the middle and pointed towards the small end. 
The shell is stout but very compact in texture, and has occa- 
sionally a just perceptible, though always faint, sloss, 
The ground is a pale, pinky stone colour of varying shades, 
sometimes almost white, sometimes browner, sometimes more 
decidedly pink, densely and boldly blotched (the blotches often 
longitudinal in their character, and radiating in curved lines 
from the broad apex) with a rich, at times brownish, maroon, 
almost black in some spots, browner in some eggs, redder 
in others, this blotching being generally intermingled with very 
similarly shaped, subsurface-looking pale grey or inky purple 
patches and clouds. 
In some eggs the markings are almost entirely confined to 
the upper one-third of the egg, where they are in places all 
but confluent. In others the markings, though in such cases 
often less densely set, extend over the entire upper half of the 
ege; but as arule but few markings, and these much reduced 
in size, extend over the lower half of the egg. 
The eggs I have measured varied from 1°66 to 1°76 in length, 
and from 1'2 to 1'28 in breadth, but the average of ten eggs is 
17a Dy 2A. 
IN THIS species, so far as my measurements go, I can discover 
no constant difference in the size of the sexes; for, although 
the two largest and heaviest birds were both females, there are 
two other females smaller than one of the males. Perhaps these 
are younger birds, and perhaps, age for age, the females may run 
larger. I have only a record of seven specimens, however, 
far too small a number to generalize from. The seven measured 
in the flesh :-— 
Length, 11°O to 12°5; expanse, 18° t0 19°75; wing, 54 to 
5°7 ; tail from vent, 2°5 to 2:9; tarsus, 145 ta 1:40; bile 
gape, 2°41 to 2°62; weight, 4’9 to 6'1 ozs. 
Jerdon, following Hodgson’s paper, J. A. S. B., 1837, 490, 
gives the weight up to 7 ozs. but as his MSS. notes show, 
Hodgson, who weighed about twenty, got only one above 6 ozs., 
- and that one 6°75 ozs., and he says :—-“ The young of the year 
weigh from 4 to 4% ozs.; adults rarely less than 5 ozs.” 
The irides are hazel to deep brown; the front of the legs 
and toes are grey, sometimes, perhaps commonly, bluish, some- 
times more plumbeous or slatey, and sometimes with a drabby 
shade, or again greenish,* and generally everywhere paler 
* In one specimen I have recorded the legs and feet as simply greenish brown. 
