and splashed, first with deep umber, chocolate, or purple-brown, and, secondly, with spots and clouds of faint inky purple, recalling not a little the style of markings of the eggs of Rhynchops albicollis.  Then there are eggs partly speckly and partly blotched, some in which the markings are all rich red and where no secondary pale purple clouds are observable, and others again in which all the markings are dull purplish brown.  Generally it may be said that the markings have a tendency to form a cap or zone at the large end.

A nest of three eggs recently obtained from Mussoorie were more richly coloured than any I have yet seen, and were decidedly glossy.  The ground-colour is a rich rosy pink, boldly, but sparingly, blotched and spotted with deep maroon, underlaid by clouds and spots of pale purple, which appear as if beneath the surface of the shell.  In all the eggs the markings are far more numerous at the large end, where in one they form a huge confluent maroon-coloured patch, mottled lighter and darker.

An egg recently obtained in Cashmere on the 20th June was a somewhat elongated oval, more or less compressed towards one end; a delicate glossy white ground with a faint pink tinge; a rich zone of reddish-purple spots and specks round the large end; a few similar markings scattered sparingly over the rest of the surface of the egg, and a multitude of very faint streaks and clouds of very pale inky purple underlying the primary markings.

In length the eggs vary from 0.9 to 1.15, and in breadth from 0.7 to 0.78; but the average of twenty-five eggs measured is 1.03 by 0.75.

271.  Hypsipetes ganeesa, Sykes. The Southern-Indian Black Bulbul.

Hypsipetes neilgherriensis, Jerd.; Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 78; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 445.  Hypsipetes ganeesa, Sykes, Jerd. t.c. p. 78.

Mr. Davison tells me that “this species breeds from April to about the middle of June.  The nest is generally placed from 12 to 20 feet from the ground, in some dense clump of leaves; favourite sites are the bunches of parasitic plants with which nearly every acacia, and in fact nearly every other tree about Ootacamund, is covered.  The nest is composed exteriorly of moss, dry leaves, and roots, lined with roots and fibres:  the normal number of eggs is two; they are white with claret-coloured and purplish spots.”

A nest of this species taken at Coonoor on the 14th March, 1869, by Mr. Carter, to whom I owe this and many other nests from the Nilghiris, reminds one much of those of the Red-cheeked Bulbuls.  A wisp of dry grass and dead leaves, with the dead leaves greatly predominating exteriorly, twisted into a shallow cup, some 41/2 inches in diameter externally, and with a shallow depression tolerably neatly lined with finer grass-stems measuring some 3 inches across and perhaps an inch in depth.  The bottom of the nest is almost exclusively composed of dead leaves; while even in the sides, externally, little but these are visible, only a few grass-stems crossing in and out, here and there, sufficiently to keep the leaves in their places.