686 
Staff-Surgeon K. H. Jones on Birds 
Gallicrex cinereus. 
The Indian Watercock is a common breeding species about 
Shi Tao, where it does not arrive until June, and leaves again 
in September. Swinhoe met with the bird at Chefoo in the 
summer, and surmised that it bred there : he states that the 
local Chinese name is “ Hung Kwan/ ; or Red-Cap ; bnt at 
Shi Tao it is known by the name of “ Pam-Pam,” from the 
characteristic cry, which is heard especially in the evening 
and first part of the night. 
It is a late breeder, no doubt because the summer is not 
sufficiently advanced for purposes of nidification in a sub¬ 
tropical and tropical species until the month of July, when 
most eggs are laid. The earliest date for fresh eggs was 
July 8th and the latest August 6th. 
The nest is always made among rank grass and reeds in 
damp and marshy places, and is, of course, composed of grasses 
and dried water-plants below and lined with finer kinds. 
The eggs vary from four to seven in number, but most 
nests contain six. They are very handsome, being of a very 
yellowish eream-colour, thickly streaked and with varying 
shades of red and red-brown. One clutch of six is of a 
whitish ground-colour, rather thinly streaked with reddish- 
brown, and spotted with shell-markings of a grey colour. 
In all clutches of six which were seen, one egg is of a much 
paler colour than the others. 
Pleet-Surgeon J. Stenhouse, R.N., found this bird breeding 
up in a tree in Fokien Province; it never makes use of such 
a nesting-site in Shantung, so far as is known. 
It probably breeds still farther north, for Commander 
H. Lynes has met with it in Corea. 
The eggs vary in length from P74 to 1*55 inches and in 
breadth from 1*27 to I’ll: the average of forty-one eggs 
is 1*64 by 1*20. 
Charadrius dominicus. 
The Eastern Golden Plover was met with on several 
occasions on its way south from its far northern breeding- 
grounds. In October 1901, on several successive days, 
