The HACKLED GROUND PIGEON (_Callœnas Nicobarica_) is a powerfully-built bird, with a strong beak, furnished with a soft, conical excrescence at its base; the feet approximate the gallinaceous type, having stout tarsi and short toes; the long wings when closed extend almost to the tip of the rounded tail, which is composed of twelve broad feathers. The plumage is richly coloured, and so prolonged around the throat as to form a complete mane or collar. The head, throat, entire under side, and wings are blackish green; the feathers on the lower part of the body edged with blue; the longest of the collar-feathers, back, rump, and feathers of wing-covers are grass-green, with a metallic lustre, the shorter collar-feathers being of a glossy golden hue, and those of the tail pure white. The eye is light reddish brown, the beak blackish and the foot reddish purple. The length is fourteen inches, the breadth across the wings twenty-nine inches; the wing measures nine inches and a half, and the tail two inches and two-thirds. [Illustration: THE HACKLED GROUND PIGEON (_Callœnas Nicobarica_).] This beautiful bird, according to Jerdon, is met with on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Merqui Archipelago, the Philippines, and Malaya generally, usually preferring to settle upon the small, unoccupied islands. Though, like its congeners, it possesses considerable powers of flight, it seeks the grain and insects that afford it the means of subsistence almost exclusively on the ground, upon which it passes the entire day, only leaving its surface to seek a perch whereon to sleep. We are without particulars respecting the incubation of this Pigeon, except that, like the Partridge, it builds its nest upon the ground. * * * * * The CROWNED PIGEONS (_Gouræ_), as the largest members of the family of Pigeons are called, inhabit New Guinea and the neighbouring islands. These birds exceed the Domestic Fowl in size, and are remarkable for a fan-like crest with which the head is adorned. Their body is stout; their wings, in which the secondary quills exceed the primaries in length, are long and much rounded at the tip; the beak is about half as long as the head, the foot furnished with long tarsi and short toes, and the slaty-blue plumage very soft in texture. THE CROWNED PIGEON. The CROWNED PIGEON (_Goura coronata_) is principally of a slate-blue colour, with chestnut-red shoulders and white stripes on the centre of the wing; the tail-feathers terminate in a white stripe. The eye is yellowish scarlet, the back dull grey, and the foot red, powdered with white. The length of this bird is twenty-eight inches; the wing measures fourteen and a half and the tail ten inches. [Illustration: THE VICTORIA CROWNED PIGEON (_Goura Victoriæ_).]