“July 29, 1875.  A nest containing 4 fresh eggs. 
Aug. 1, 1876.     "    "         5 fresh eggs. 
Aug. 5, 1876.     "    "         4 fresh eggs. 
Aug. 5, 1876.     "    "         3 fresh eggs. 
Aug. 5, 1876.     "    "         4 fresh eggs. 
Aug. 5, 1876.     "    "         5 fresh eggs. 
Aug. 7, 1876.     "    "         5 fresh eggs. 
Aug. 8, 1876.     "    "         4 fresh eggs.”

And he adds the following note:—­“Belgaum, 22nd July, 1879.  Four fresh eggs.  Same locality, numerous other nests in August and September.”

Major C.T.  Bingham notes:—­“I have not yet observed this bird at Delhi.  At Allahabad I procured one nest in the beginning of March, shooting the birds.  The nest was made of very fine dry grass, and contained four small white eggs, speckled thickly with minute points of brick-red.  The average of the four eggs is 0.60 by 0.41 inch.”

Mr. Cripps informs us that in Eastern Bengal this bird is very common and a permanent resident.  Eggs are found from the beginning of May to the end of June, in grass-jungle almost on the ground.  The nest is a deep cup, externally of fine grasses, internally of the downy tops of the sun-grass.

In the Deccan, Messrs. Davidson and Wenden state that it is “common in all grass-lands.  It breeds in the rainy season.”

Mr. Oates, writing on the breeding of this bird in Pegu, says:—­“The majority of birds begin laying at the commencement of June, and probably nests may be found throughout the rains.  I procured a nest on the 2nd of November, a very late date I imagine.  It contained four eggs.”

I have taken the eggs of this bird myself on many occasions.  I have had them sent me with the nest and bird by Mr. Brooks from Etawah, and Mr. F.R.  Blewitt from Jhansi.  From first to last I have seen fully fifty authentic eggs of this species.  All were of one and the same type, and that type widely different from any one of those that Dr. Bree, following European ornithologists, figures.  Dr. Bree’s three figures all represent a perfectly spotless egg—­one pink, the other bluish white, and the third a pretty dark bluish green.  Our eggs, on the contrary, are spotted; the ground is white with, when fresh and unblown, a delicate pink hue, due not to the shell itself, but to its contents, which partially show through it.  Occasionally the white ground has a faint greenish tinge.

Every egg is spotted, and most densely so towards the large end, with, as a rule, excessively minute red, reddish-purple, and pale purple specks, thus resembling, though smaller, more glossy, and far less densely speckled, the eggs of Franklinia buchanani.  These are beyond all question the eggs of our Indian species, and the only type of them that I have yet observed; but the question remains—­Is our Indian Prinia cursitans, Franklin, really identical with the European C. schoenicola, Bonaparte? [A]—­and this can only be settled by careful