80 PURPLE WATERHEN. 



the most interesting papers I ever read, detailing liis 

 visit to Lake Halloula, near Algiers, thus speaks of 

 this bird: — "We were rewarded by a single nest of 

 the Great Purple Galliilule. A magnificent fellow he 

 is as he rises sluggishly from a dense mass of water- 

 weed, shewing his rich purple sheen in the sunlight, 

 and hanging behind him his huge pink legs and feet. 

 His nest is very like that of the Coot, but the number 

 of eggs seems fewer, four being the largest number I 

 have taken in one sitting, thou:gh the complement was 

 very probably not complete. I need not add anything 

 to what Mr. Salvin has stated ('Ibis,' vol. i, p. 361,) as 

 to the predatory habits of this bird. The eggs surpass 

 in beauty, to my eye, those of any other of the class; 

 their rich pink ground, with their red, russet, and 

 brown spots, are very characteristic." 



I am happy to say that, through the kindness of 

 Mr. Tristram, I am able to give a figure of one of 

 the eggs taken upon this occasion by Mr. Tristram 

 himself. 



Malherbe, in his "Birds of Sicily," gives February 

 and March as the months in which this bird incubates;, 

 and he says that the young are hatched in April, and 

 are covered with a bluish black down, with the beak 

 and frontal plate blue. But the journey of Mr. Tristram, 

 from which I have made the above extract, was made 

 in May, 1856. ISTow Sicily being in the same latitude 

 as Algiers, and only some four hundred and fifty miles 

 further east, we can hardly imagine a difierence of two 

 or three months in the nidification of this bird in the 

 two places. In fact there is doubt about M. Malherbe's 

 description of the bird. Degland thus expresses this 

 doubt in a note: — "Ce savant n' indique pas la couleur 

 des ocufs. Ne parlerait-il pas de msu?" 



