something to do with the variation of colour in the eggs.  In a nest containing four eggs one had the majority of the spots collected on the small, instead of the thick end as usual, and, strange to say, it was addled white.  The other three were hard-set.  The parents get very much excited when their young are approached, and, as long as the intruder is in the vicinity, keep up an incessant volley of their harsh grating cries, at the same time stretching out their necks and jerking about their tails violently.”

Mr. J.R.  Cripps, writing from Furreedpore in Eastern Bengal, says:—­“Excessively common and a permanent resident.  Prefers open plains interspersed with bushes, also the small bushes on road-sides are a favourite haunt of theirs.  Breeds in the district.  I took ten nests this season from the 11th April to 4th June, with from one to five eggs in each.  Four nests were placed in bamboo clumps from 9 to 30 feet high; one 40 feet from the ground on a casuarina-tree, one 20 feet up in a but-tree, and the rest in babool-trees at from 6 to 15 feet high from the ground.  There is no attempt at concealment.  The nest is a deep cup fixed in a fork, and is made of grasses with a deal of the downy tops of the same for an outside lining; this peculiarity at once distinguishes the nest of this species.  The description given by Mr. Hodgson of a nest found by him on the 16th May at Jahar Powah, in ‘Nests and Eggs,’ p. 172, correctly describes the nests I have found.  This species imitates the call of several kinds of small birds, as Sparrows, King-Crows, &c., and I have often been deceived by it.”

The eggs of this species, of which, thanks to Mr. Gammie, I now possess a noble series, vary very much in shape and size.  Typically they are very broad ovals, a little compressed towards one end, but moderately elongated ovals are not uncommon.  The shell is very fine and smooth, and often has a more or less perceptible gloss; in no case, however, very pronounced.

There are two distinct types of colouring.  In the one, the ground-colour is a delicate very pale green or greenish white, in some few pale, still faintly greenish, stone-colour; and the markings consist as a rule of specks and spots of brownish olive, mostly gathered into a broad zone about the large end, intermingled with specks and spots of pale inky purple.  In some eggs the whole of the markings are very pale and washed-out, but in the majority the brownish-olive or olive-brown spots, as the case may be, are rather bright, especially in the zone.  In the other type (and out of 42 eggs, 12 belong to this type) the ground-colour varies from pinky white to a warm salmon-pink, and the markings, distributed and arranged as in the first type, are a rather dull red and pale purple.  In fact the two types differ as markedly as do those of Dicrurus ater; and though I have as yet received none such, I doubt not that with a couple of hundred eggs before one intermediate varieties, as in the case of D. ater, would be found to exist—­as it is, two more different looking eggs than the two types of this species could hardly be conceived.  I may add that in eggs of both types it sometimes, though very rarely, happens that the zone is round the small end.