The eggs, which, to judge from a large series sent me by Mr. Cripps, do not appear to vary much in shape, are moderately broad ovals, more or less pointed towards one end.  The shell is fine and fragile but entirely devoid of gloss; the ground-colour is white with a very faint pinky or lilac tinge, and they are thickly speckled all over with minute markings of two different shades—­the one a sort of purplish brown (they are so small that it is difficult to make certain of the exact colour), and the other inky purple or grey.  In most eggs the markings are most dense at or about the large end, and occasionally a spot may be met with larger than the rest, as big as a pin’s head say, and some of these seem to have a reddish tinge, while some are more of a sepia.

The eggs vary from 0.75 to 0.86 in length and from 0.59 to 0.62 in breadth, but the average of twelve eggs is almost exactly 0.8 by 0.6.

394.  Hypolais rama (Sykes). Sykes’s Tree-Warbler.

Phyllopneuste rama (Sykes), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 189. 
Iduna caligata, Licht., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 553.

I have never myself obtained the nest and eggs of Sykes’s Tree-Warbler, P. rama, apud Jerd.[A] On the 1st April, at Etawah, my friend Mr. Brooks shot a male of this species off a nest; and I saw the bird, nest, and eggs within an hour, and visited the spot later.  The nest was placed in a low thorny bush, about a foot from the ground, on the side of a sloping bank in one of the large dry ravines that in the Etawah District fringe the River Junina for a breadth of from a mile to four miles.  The nest was nearly egg-shaped, with a circular entrance near the top.  It was loosely woven with coarse and fine grass, and a little of the fibre of the “sun” (Crotalaria juncea), and very neatly felted on the whole interior surface of the lower two thirds with a compact coating of the down of flowering-grasses and little bits of spider’s web.  It was about 5 inches in its longest and 31/2 inches in its shortest diameter.  It contained three fresh eggs, which were white, very thickly speckled with brownish pink, in places confluent and having a decided tendency to form a zone near the large end.  Three or four days later we shot the female at the same spot.

[Footnote A:  I reproduce the note on this bird as it appeared in the ‘Rough Draft,’ but I think some mistake has been made, as Mr. Hume himself suggests.  Full reliance, however, may be placed on Mr. Doig’s note, which is a most interesting contribution.—­ED]

A similar nest and two eggs, taken in Jhansi on the 12th August, were sent me with one of the parent birds by Mr. F.R.  Blewitt, and, again, another nest with four eggs was sent me from Hoshungabad.

There ought to be no doubt about these nests and eggs, the more so that I have several specimens of the bird from various parts of the North-Western Provinces and Central Provinces killed in August and September, but somehow I do not feel quite certain that we have not made some mistake.  Beyond doubt the great mass of this species migrate and breed further north.  I have never obtained specimens in June or July; and if these nests really, as the evidence seems to show, belonged to the birds that were shot on or near them, these latter must have bred in India before or after their migration, as well as in Northern Asia.