In shape the eggs are typically rather long ovals, slightly compressed or pointed towards the small end.  Some are a good deal pointed and elongated; a few are tolerably perfect broad ovals, and abnormal shapes are not very uncommon.  The ground is universally pinkish or reddish white (in old eggs which have been kept a long time a sort of dull French white), of which more or less is seen according to the extent of the markings.  These markings take almost every conceivable form, defined and undefined—­specks, spots, blotches, streaks, smudges, and clouds; their combinations are as varied as their colours, which embrace every shade of red, brownish, and purplish red.  As a rule, besides the primary markings, feeble secondary markings of pale inky purple are exhibited, often only perceptible when the egg is closely examined, sometimes so numerous as to give the ground-colour of the egg a universal purple tint.  In about half the eggs there is a tendency to exhibit, more or less, an irregular zone or cap at the large end, but solitary eggs occur in which there is a cap at the small end.  Three pretty well marked types may be separately described.  First, an egg thickly mottled and streaked all over with deep blood-red, which is entirely confluent over one third of the surface, namely at the large end, and leaves less than a third of the ground-colour visible as a paler mottling over the rest of the surface.  Then there is another type with a very delicate pure pink ground, and with a few large, bold, deep red blotches, chiefly at the large end, where they are intermingled with a few small pale inky-purple clouds, and with only a few spots and specks of the former colour scattered over the rest of the surface.  Lastly, there is a pale dingy pink ground, speckled almost uniformly, but only moderately thickly, over the whole surface, with minute specks and spots of blood-red and pale inky purple.

The dimensions are excessively variable.  In length the eggs vary from 0.7 to 1.02, and in breadth from 0.6 to 0.75, but the average of sixty eggs measured was 0.89 by 0.65.

279.  Molpastes burmanicus (Sharpe). The Burmese Red-vented Bulbul.

The Burmese Red-vented Bulbul occurs from Manipur down to Rangoon.  Writing from Upper Pegu, Mr. Oates says:—­“On the 29th July I found a nest in the extremity of a bamboo-frond forming one of a large clump near my house at Boulay.  It was circular, the internal diameter about 2.5 and the external 4 inches; the depth inside 1.5, and the total height 2.5.  Foundation of dead leaves, the bulk of the nest coarse grass and small roots, and the interior of much finer grass carefully curved to shape.  Altogether the nest was a very pretty structure.  Two eggs measured 0.9 by 0.62 and 0.65.  Another nest found at the same time was placed in a small shrub about 4 feet from the ground.  It was very similar in construction and size to the above and contained three eggs.”

Subsequently writing from Lower Pegu, he says:—­“Breeds abundantly from May to September, and has no particular preference for any one month.”