subsurface-looking

A few streaks, spots, and hieroglyphics of a deep brownish red, each more or less surrounded by a reddish nimbus, are scattered very thinly about the surface of the egg, while, besides these, a few small greyish-purple subsurface-looking spots may be observed about the larger end.

The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 Allan Octavian Hume 1870

The shell very fine and with a slight gloss, the ground-colour a delicate salmon-pink, and with a broad ring of deep brownish-pink spots and blotches intermingled with pale purple subsurface-looking clouds and spots round the large end.

The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 Allan Octavian Hume 1870

The markings, commonly somewhat dull and ill-defined, are occasionally bold and bright; and in colour they vary through every shade of yellowish, reddish, olive, and purplish brown, while subsurface-looking pale purple clouds are intermingled with the darker and more defined markings.

The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 Allan Octavian Hume 1870

In some eggs a few faint clouds or small spots of subsurface-looking dusky purple may be noticed mingled with the rest of the markings.

The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 Allan Octavian Hume 1870

The ground-colour is generally either a very pale greenish white or a creamy-stone colour, and more or less thickly spotted and blotched with different shades of yellowish and reddish brown; many of the markings are almost invariably gathered into a conspicuous, but irregular and ill-defined, zone near the large end, in which zone clouds of subsurface-looking, pale, and dingy purple, not usually observable on any other portion of the egg, are thickly intermingled.

The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 Allan Octavian Hume 1870

At the large end the markings are dense, forming in some eggs an almost confluent zone, in others a mottled cap; they consist of irregular-shaped spots and specks of deep red and pale subsurface-looking greyish purple; over the rest of the surface of the egg outside the zone or cap the markings are much smaller in size and much more thinly scattered, and it is observable that the secondary purple markings are to a great extent confined to the zone or cap, as the case may be, and its immediate neighbourhood.

The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 Allan Octavian Hume 1870

a subsurface-looking purple, varying to almost inky grey.

The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 Allan Octavian Hume 1870