Mr. Mandelli, however, took a nest of this species at Lebong on the 23rd June, in the middle of a tea-bush which grew at the side of a small ravine, which was neither hooded nor domed.  The nest was about 18 inches from the ground and completely sheltered from above by tea-leaves.  It was a deep cup composed externally chiefly of bamboo-leaves, but with a good many dead leaves of trees incorporated in the base, and lined with very fine grass-stems.  It contained four fresh eggs.  It is quite clear that this species, like S. nigriceps, only domes its nest in certain situations.

The eggs obtained by Mr. Gammie and Mr. Mandelli are very regular, slightly elongated ovals.  The shell is very fine and compact, but has only a faint gloss.  The ground is white and round the larger end is a zone or imperfect cap of specks and spots of brownish red, generally intermingled with tiny spots, usually very faint, of pale purple.  A few specks and spots brown, yellowish, or reddish brown, and sometimes also pale purple, are scattered about the rest of the egg.

In length the eggs vary from 0.64 to 0.72, and in breadth from 0.50 to 0.53, but the average of eight eggs was 0.68 by 0.52 nearly.

174.  Stachyrhidopsis pyrrhops, Hodgs. The Red-billed Babbler.

Stachyris pyrrhops, Hodgs.  Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 21; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 392.

Accounts differ somewhat as to the eggs of the Red-billed Babbler.

From Murree, Colonel C.H.T.  Marshall writes:—­“Nest found in low ground, about 100 yards from the River Jheelum, situated in a low bush, externally composed of broad dry reed-leaves, and interiorly of fine grass, cup-shaped.  Eggs, four in number, long oval, white, with a few reddish specks at the larger end.  Length .7, breadth .5.  Lays in the latter end of June, 4000 feet up.”

The nest, which he kindly sent me, is a deep cup, coarsely made interiorly of grass-stems, externally of broad blades of grass, in which a few dead leaves are incorporated; there is no lining.  Exteriorly the nest is about 3.5 inches in diameter, and about 3 in depth; the egg-cavity is a little more than 2 inches in diameter, and fully 1.75 in depth.

Mr. Hodgson “found the nest” of this species in Nepal, “at an elevation of about 6000 feet, in shrubby upland.”  It was “placed in a small shrub about 2 feet from the ground.”  It was “a very deep cup, about 4 inches in length, and 2.5 in diameter externally, placed obliquely endwise upon cross-stems of the shrub, and opening, as it were obliquely, upwards at one end,” the cavity being about 1.5 in diameter.  The nest was made of “dry leaves and grass pretty compactly woven.”  The nest “contained four eggs,” which are described as “whitish, with spare and faint fawn-coloured spots,” and are figured as measuring 0.65 by 0.47.