There are two very distinct types of this bird’s eggs.  The one pure white and spotless, the other a pale salmon-colour, spotted with a rich brownish red.  These eggs unquestionably both belong to the same species, as I have taken them times without number myself and can positively certify to their parentage; moreover connecting links are not wanting in a large series.  I have one egg perfectly white, with the exception of three or four blackish-brown spots, another with more of these spots, another with almost as many as the ordinary spotted eggs have, the ground-colour in all these being still pure white, and the spots being blackish or very deep reddish brown.  Then I have others similar to those just described, but showing a faint salmon-coloured halo round one or two of the largest spots, others in which the halo is further developed, and others again with the entire ground-colour an excessively pale salmon throughout, and so on a complete series gradually increasing in intensity of colour till we get the pure rich salmon-buff which is at the other end of the scale.  I am particular in this description, because the eggs of this bird have been a subject of almost as many contradictions between Indian naturalists as the chameleon of pious memory.  In shape the eggs are typically a rather long oval, somewhat pointed towards one end.  Very much elongated varieties are common, recalling in this respect the eggs of Chibia hottentotta.  Spherical varieties, if they occur, must be very rare, the enormous series I possess containing no example.  In the colour of the ground, as above remarked, there is every possible, variety of shade between pure white and a very rich salmon-colour.  In the intensity and number of the markings there is an equally great variety.  The markings, always spots and specks, the largest never exceeding 0.1 inch in diameter, are invariably most numerous towards the large end, where they are sometimes, though rarefy, slightly confluent.  They vary from only two or three to a number too large to count, and in colour through many shades of reddish, blackish, and purplish brown, the latter being rare and abnormal.

The eggs are entirely devoid of gloss, as a rule, though here and there a slight trace of it is observable.  It is this want of gloss alone that distinguishes some of the larger white, black-spotted varieties from the eggs of the common Oriole, which they occasionally exactly resemble not only in shape, colour, and character of marking, but even (though generally smaller) in size.

In length they vary From 0.87 to 1.15 inch, and in breadth from 0.7 to 0.85, but the average of 152 eggs measured is 1.01 by 0.75 inch.  I have two dwarf eggs of this species not included in the above average which I myself obtained in different nests, measuring only 0.78 by 0.5 inch, and 0.87 by 0.62 inch.

328.  Dicrurus longicaudatus.  A. Hay. The Indian Ashy Drongo.

Dicrurus longicaudatus, A.  Hay, Jerd.  B. Ind. i, p. 430.  Buchanga longicaudata (A.  Hay), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 280.