seed-stalks of grasses, firmly and neatly interwoven; with the latter it is also usually lined, although sometimes a black fibrous lichen is used; externally the materials are kept compactly together by being plastered over with spiders’ webs.  It is altogether a light and elegant nest.  The shape is circular, somewhat shallow; internal diameter 3 inches.  The eggs are three or four, generally the latter number, and so variable in colour and distribution of spots that until I had got several specimens and compared them narrowly, I was inclined to think we had more than one species of Dicrurus here.  I am, however, now fully convinced that these variable eggs belong to the same species.  Sometimes they are dull white with brick-red spots openly disposed in form of a rude ring at the larger end; at other times the spots are rufescent claret, with duller indistinct ones appearing through the shell; others are of a deep carneous hue, clouded and coarsely blotched with deep rufescent claret; while again some are faint carneous with large irregular blotches of rufous clay with duller ones beneath the shell.”

Some of Captain Hutton’s eggs which he sent me were clearly those of Hypsipetes psaroides (of which also be sent me specimens), and the fact is that in thick foliage where the Red-bill is not seen nothing is easier than to mistake this bird for D. longicaudatus.  I have taken a great many of these nests, and I never found eggs other than of the two types to be below described.

Colonel G.F.L.  Marshall writes:—­“In Kumaon this species breeds from 4000 to 5000 feet above the sea; the eggs are laid in the last week of May.  I have never seen a nest at Naini Tal itself (6000 to 7000 feet), but at Bheem Tal (4000 feet) I found numerous nests within three days, in the first week of June; all without exception had young.  The next season I visited the place in the last week of May, and found the eggs just laid.

“The nests were of the usual Dicrurus type, wedged in a fork at heights varying from fifteen to fifty feet from the ground, but as far as my experience goes always in conspicuous places and generally on trees almost or quite bare of leaves.  The nests are usually only to be obtained by sawing off the bough they are built on.”

Long ago Captain Cock, writing from Dhurmsala, said:—­“I took a nest on the 8th of May, containing four eggs.  The eggs are regular, roundish ovals, somewhat pointed towards one end.  The ground-colour is white, here and there suffused with a faint pinkish tinge, and it is spotted and blotched with purplish red and pale lilac, most of the spots being gathered into an irregular zone about the large end.”