Mr. W. Davison in 1875 gave me the following note:—­“On the morning of the 25th March I took at Bankasoon a nest of this species in thick forest; it was placed on the ground and was composed externally of dead leaves, with a scanty lining of fine roots and fibres.  It measured externally about 5 inches high by about 4 wide.  The egg-cavity was hardly 3 inches in diameter.  The nest was only partially domed, and was very loosely and carelessly put together.

“The nest contained three eggs, but these were so far incubated that it was impossible to blow two of them.”

The single egg of this species obtained by Mr. Davison is in shape a moderately broad oval, a little pointed towards the small end; the shell is fine, but has little gloss.  The ground-colour, so far as this is visible through the thickly-set markings, is white, and it is very finely but densely stippled and freckled (most densely at the large end, where the markings are not unfrequently confluent or nearly so) with dull to bright reddish brown; here and there, especially about the large end, more or less faint grey or red specks, spots, or tiny clouds may be traced underlying as it were the brown or purplish markings.

The egg sent me from Pegu by Mr. Oates is of precisely the same size and type, but the markings are much less dense and are brighter coloured.  The ground-colour is white, and the egg is pretty thickly speckled with a reddish-chocolate brown.  Here and there a moderately large irregularly-shaped spot is intermingled with the finer specklings.  The markings are rather most dense at the large end, where there is a tendency to form a zone, and here a number of pale purplish-grey streaks and specks are also intermingled.

Major C.T.  Bingham says:—­“Early on the morning of the 7th April, moving camp from the sources of the Thoungyeen, on the side of a hill at the foot of a bamboo-bush not two feet from the road, I flushed and shot a female of the above species off her nest; a little loosely-put-together round ball of dry bamboo-leaves, unlined, though domed over, with the entrance at the side, and containing two fresh eggs, white, thickly speckled with brick-red and obscure purple.  On the 12th of the same month, I found a second nest behind the zayat or rest-house at Meeawuddy.  This was similar to the nest above described, and contained three similar eggs.”

The eggs measure from .78 to .88 in length, and from .58 to .65 in breadth; but the average of twelve eggs is .82 by .62.

147.  Pellorneum fuscicapillum (Bl.). The Brown-capped Babbler.

Pellorneum fuscocapillum (Bl), Hume, Cat. no. 399 quint.

Captain Legge writes, in his ’Birds of Ceylon’:—­“The nest of this species is exceedingly difficult to find, and scarcely anything is known of its nidification.  Mr. Blyth succeeded in finding it in Haputale at an elevation of 5500 feet.  It was placed in a bramble about 3 feet from the ground, and was cup-shaped, loosely constructed of moss and leaves; it contained three young.”