302 
ORNITHOLOGY. 
green rushes, placed in amongst rushes, reed, and floating 
weeds, and were very scanty. [G. H.^ 
This species also breeds during the rainy season in the 
plains of Oudh and the North West Provinces. 
I may remark that Dr. Jerdon is mistaken in his state- 
ment that Mr. Brookes found this species breeding in large 
churrs on the Ganges. Mr. Brookes disclaims having ever said 
anything of the kind ; the only species of true Terns that do 
thus breed are Seena aurantia, Sterna melanogastra (Temm.), 
and Sternula minuta. Far in the north west, in the rivers 
of the Panjab, a few pairs of Gelochelidon anglica remain 
to breed, and on the 28tli of April, 1870, I took an egg of 
this species on a sandbank of the Chenab, two miles below 
Wazirabad, and killed the parent bird as she rose from the 
egg. H. indica is essentially a marsh Tern, which, with us, 
G. anglica is not. The former lays in July and August. As 
a rule their nests are placed towards the centre of some large 
3 heel, where the water is deepest and no rice or rush grows, 
but where the surface is paved with the broad leaves of the 
water-lily and the lotus. On these they construct a slight 
platform of rush and weed, wound round and round in a cir- 
cular form. Four seems to be the full number. The eggs 
are moderately broad ovals, a good deal pointed towards one 
end ; the texture is very fine and close, but they have little 
or no gloss. The ground colour varies ; in some it is a rich 
or pale blue green, in some a pale olive stone colour, in some 
an olive brown, but most commonly I think a pale clear olive 
green. The markings, which are generally pretty nume- 
rous, consist of streaks, spots, and blotches of more or less 
intense blackish umber, or reddish brown, and have a number 
of very pale, greyish, or purplish brown clouds, streaks or 
spots underlying the primary markings. Some of the eggs 
have a very Snipe-like character, with large oblique blotches ; 
some have only very small specks or spots, while others re- 
mind one much of many types of Plover^s eggs. With us 
they always make their own nests, generally, as already men- 
tioned, on the surface of floating leaves, but sometimes on 
tufts of water grass ; but in Northern Africa I see that Canon 
