" I cannot say whether any of the Bustard, found there (luring the cold season,
migrate from Mysore ; but some, at all events, breed there, as in the Tumkw
district, to my certain knowledge, and I believe in other districts too."
This also confirms their breeding in Mysore, of which, when I wrote, I had
no certainty.
I mentioned that they occurred, in suitable localities of course, throughout the
Central Provinces, and several gentlemen write to confirm this. Mr. J. A.
Bcthain snys : " I have seen Bustar! in the Betul district between Badnur and
Muttaie, and once near Satna {between Jabalpur and Allahabad) • in the latter
instance the bird was close to the Railway when the train passed, and did not
appear to mind the rattle and noise I was surprised, for I had always imagined
them to be very shy bird-."
Another gentleman writes that he has seen them on several occasions near or
within a few miles of the Barg^sh Railway Station of the Jabalpur line.
It appears that in the Nerbudda valley the Vernacular (Hindoo) name for
these Bustards is. Seratloo,
Two C;;L;S of this species will be found very fairly figured on the first of the
four plates of eg^s that follow this Appendix.
THE BENGAL FLORICAN. (VOL. I., pp. 23, et sea.)—
In speaking of this species as occurring in the North-Western Provinces, north
of the Ganges and mentioning that I had never met with it west of the Kadir of
the Ganges I did not perhaps make it sufficiently char that I was aware that in
that Kadir, alike on the left and right banks, it occurred in the cold season. I
did not know, however, that it was really common anywhere on the right bank, but
Mr. A. M. Markliain says: ''The Bengal Florican is very common in the Kadir
of the Ganges (right bank) in the Mozuffuruuggur and Saharanpur districts, especially
the former.
I was not moreover aware that this species ever straggled far into the Doab,
and well away from the Ganges, but that it does so is now certain. Mr C. E.
Yeatman informs me that in 1S65 (cold season) he saw a pair and shot one,
afine cock, in a small dak jungle, near Secundcrabad, in the Buhmdshahr district;
that again he met with one, in the winter of 1874, in some high sandy ground
near Shekoabad in the Mainpuri district; and that lastly, on the 1 ith of December
1879. he shot a hen just above the Jumna ravines in the south-west corner of the same
district. Again Mr. Markham writes : "On the 5th of February, at Mahewa close
to the Tumna. in the extreme west of this, the Allahabad district, I twice put up
a hen "Florican (S. ben^alcnsts, of Jerdon). not the small Likh Florican (S. awitus.
of lerdón) of Central India, but the large Florican which we meet with in the grass
plains of Rohilkhand and Northern Oudh. Most unfortunately I had only Quail
shot in my gun when she firsl g»t up, and I only tickled her. and when I put her up
the second time, she was out of shot. I could not put her up again, and next day
had to leave the locality. I never heard of a Florican here, and am curious to know
what you think of the occurrence. It most certainly was a Florican, and not a
Bustard I have seen hundreds and shot scores of them."
We must therefore now admit this species as a rare straggler to the Doab and extend
its range as far west as the Jumna.*
When I wrote I had never seen an egg, but I have since been presented with one
by Mr. F. A. ShiUingford, who says : "The Florican's egg I myself picked up in
June last. The female bird was seated on it when I first saw her about five yards
distant ; when she rose I found one egg. There was no attempt at a nest ; the
egg was lying on damp mud with die few blades of grass that were growing near
trodden down. Voung birds have several limes been caught in this district."
This egg is of the same type as regards texture and colouration as many of those
which I possess of the Great Indian Bustard and Lesser Florican, but is intermediate
ir. size, and conspicuously more elongate I than those of either of the others. It is
more of the shape of a hen's egg, but rather more elongated than this even, and
decidedly more compressed towards the small end. The shell is firm and strong,
smooth and compact, but has little gloss. The pore-pittings arc very inconspicuous.
The ground colour is a dull, pale green stone colour, and it is rather sparingly
streaked and blotched with dull, rather pale brown, somewhat greyer in some spots,
more olivaceous in others.
It measures 2*6 inches in length by 1*76 in breadth.
I hope other correspondents will send me more of these rare eggs, as eggs of these
Bustards vary so much that, without a good series, one cannot properly describe
them.
THE LESSER FLORICAN OR LIKH. (Vol. I., pp. 33, et seq.)—
At page 36 I quoted a remark of Mr. Davidson's that this species was only found
sparingly in Mysore It appears however that in some parts of that province, at any
rate, they are very abundant. Major Mclnroy says: " I think I am within the
mark when I say that near Mallur. a station on the Bangalore-Madras line of rail,
and 25 miles from Bangalore, thirty birds were shot in one day by two officers of
the Forest Department. Several good bags have been made in that neighbourhood.
Florican are pretty numerous throughout East Mysore, but, for some reason which
I cannot divine, are not nearly so common in the western division of the Province.
" I have known four or five killed of a morning within a few miles of Samulcottah,
a now deserted military cautonment seven miles from Coconada."
Two eggs of this species are figured ou the first of the four egg plates which follow
this Appendix.
THE LARGE OR BLACK-BELLIED SAND-GROUSE. (Vol I.,
pp. 47, et seq.) —
"When Volume I. was published, I had no detailed information of the nidification
of this species in Kabul or Behichistan. But it was found breeding in numbers not
ten miles from Kandahar during our recent occupation of that place, and in the
neighbourhood of Chaman (also in Southern Afghanistan) Mr. H. E. Barnes found
them breeding plentifully in May and June.
They lay in slight depressions in the soil similar and similarly situated to those in
which the Common Sand-Grouse lays. Mr. Barnes says : " The eggs, three in number,
are, as regards shape and colour, exact counterparts of those of Plerocles exustus,
but are of course larger. They average I '8 by i "35-"
An egg sent me by that gentleman, the parents of which he shot and identified, IS
a very elongated, cylindrical, dumpy, sausage-like egg ; the shell is extremely fine
and compact, and has a fine gloss. The ground colour IS a very pale green or
greenish white, and it is moderately thickly studded with irregular spots, and small
blotches more or less streaky in shape, of a rather pale yellowish brown and very pale,
slightly purplish, grey. It measures I 84 by I'2.
Another egg. very kindly sent me by Mr. James Murray of the Kurrachee museum,
taken near the Jeempir Railway station, Sind, on the 10th of July, and sent to him
along with a pair of birds of this species, is very different in appearance, and is really,
I believe, an egg of P. alchata.
It IS a decidedly shorter egg; it has much less gloss, the ground colour is a pale
cafe au lait, the markings are of the same colours as on the other egg, but they are more
thinly set. and the bulk of them much smaller ; but then there are a couple of great
large splashes of both the yellowish brown and the purplish grey, which far exceed in
size anything on the other egg. This egg measures only 1*7 by 1*2.
It is just possible, though I doubt the fact, that some few P. arenarius may breed in
the desert country about the estuary of the Luonee, and eastwards in the Thurr and
Pakur, north of the Runn of Cutch. Mr. R. H. C. Tufnell writes: "The late
General McMaster killed a bird of this species, (a male), on the plains near Sirhpoor
( ? between Ahmedabad and Deesa) on the yt/i May, but it may have been
a chance or wounded bird, though apparently strong and quite at home. (I take
the above from a note made by General McMaster in the margin of his Jerdon.)"
THE SPOTTED SAND-GROUSE. (Vol. I., pp. 53, et seq.)—
I said that this species was only common in Sind and Jeysulmir, but it appeals
that it is also common in the southern portion of the Dhera Ghazi Khan district
(Punjab); Mr. Tufnell writes: ''Near Rajanpur, on the Punjab Frontier, these
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