“But while the nest corresponds exactly with Canon Tristram’s description[A] of those taken by him in Palestine, there are differences, oologically speaking, which induce me to hope that our Indian bird may yet be restored to specific distinction[B].  In the first place, my single eggs from each nest have a green ground-colour, and are covered all over with reddish-brown spots.  Now Mr. Tristram describes his Palestine specimens as ’richly coloured pink eggs, with a zone of darker red near the larger end, and in shape and colour resembling some of the Prinia group.’  Is it possible for the same birds to lay such widely different eggs?  If I had taken only one specimen, it might have been looked upon as a mere variety.  Again, our Indian bird lays three eggs, and I have never seen the parent birds feeding more than this number of young ones, occasionally only two.  Mr. Tristram, per contra, mentions having met with as many as five and six.  The egg is certainly the prettiest, and one of the smallest, I have ever seen; indeed, I found it too small to risk measurement.”

[Footnote A:  Tristram on the Ornithology of Palestine, P. 2.  S. 1864, p. 437; Ibis, 865, pp. 82, 83.]

[Footnote B:  The two birds are now considered distinct by all ornithologists.—­ED.]

He adds:—­“Since writing the above, which appeared in ‘The Ibis,’ I have discovered that this species breeds in September and October, as well as in February and March, so some of them probably have two broods in the year.  I took a nest on the 9th October at Futtegurh, which contained two callow young and one (fresh) egg, which I send you, and which is exactly similar to all the others I have taken from time to time.”

The egg sent me by Mr. Anderson is a very broad oval in shape, a good deal compressed however, and pointed towards the small end.  The shell is very fine and has a decided gloss.  In colouring the egg is exactly like those of some of the Blackbirds—­a pale green ground, profusely freckled and streaked with a bright, only slightly brownish, red; the markings are densest round the large end, where they form a broad, nearly confluent, well-marked, but imperfect and irregular, zone.  It measures 0.55 by 0.41.

Colonel C.H.T.  Marshall says:—­“The Streaked Wren-Warbler breeds in great numbers near Delhi in March; Mr. C.T.  Bingham has found several of them in the clumps of surpat grass that had been cut within three feet of the ground on the alluvial land of the Jumna.  It was when out with him in the end of March 1876 that I first saw the nest of this species.  The locality of the nest is exactly that described by Mr. Anderson; it is oval in shape, with a large side entrance near the top; it is built of fine grass and seed-down, no cobweb being employed in the structure; it is loosely made, and there are always a few feathers in the egg-cavity.  The whereabouts is generally pointed out by the cock bird, who, seated on the top of the highest blade of grass he can find near where his hen is sitting, pours out with untiring energy his feeble monotonous song, little knowing that by so doing he has betrayed the spot where he has fixed his nest to the marauder.  The eggs, of which I have seen about fifteen or twenty, answer the description given in ‘Stray Feathers’ exactly.”