DETAILED LIST OF BIRDS. 
291 
always, grow paler and paler_, until they become a pale, 
yellowish stone, or, in other cases, pale cafe-au-lait colour. 
They vary in length from 1*26 to 1'62, and in breadth 
from 105 to 1"16, but the average of fifty eggs measured 
was 1-47 by M3. 
They lay from the middle of June to August ; the nest 
is often a mass of weeds and rushes heaped together in the 
water in the midst of the thickest grass and rice, and so 
low that the eggs are half immersed in water. Occasionally 
the nests are amongst the grass of some little island, and 
then they are much slighter. At times even when con- 
structed in the water, they are so small as hardly to be able 
to contain the eggs — little shallow, circular cups of rush 
and water weed on floating lotus leaves, or tufts of water 
grass. Dr. Jerdon tells us they lay from four to seven eggs ; 
they may in Southern India, but I do not believe it, and 
in Northern India they do not ! Out of hundreds of nests 
that I have seen, I only once found one containing even 
five eggs. Four is the almost invariable number laid point 
to point. The apical angle is too great to allow of six or 
seven being thus laid. You might as well try to get right 
angles into the centre of a circle. 
The eggs of this species really seem to indicate that it is 
not so closely allied to the Rails and Parrce as is generally 
supposed. How very different are the eggs of its nearest 
apparent Indian ally, Metopodius indicus, which lays, water- 
hen-like, from eight to ten moderately broad oval eggs, a 
good deal pointed towards one end, but still manifestly 
intended to lay anyhow in the nest, and not point to point, 
like a Plover's, or a Redshanks^ 
The eggs closely resemble those of the Australian Parra 
gallinacea, Temm., and when fresh have the most superb 
lustre of any egg I know, insomuch so that it is difficult 
to convince people who see them for the first time, that 
they are not made of agate, or when they feel them for 
themselves, fancy imitations made in the lacker work in 
which the natives in some parts of India so greatly excel. 
The ground colour of the egg varies much ; in some it 
is a very pale stone brown, in others a rich cafe-au-lait, in 
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