I am induced to notice this species, the Brown Shrike, although I possess no detailed information as to its nidification, in consequence of Lord Walden’s remarks on this subject in ‘The Ibis’ of 1867.  He says “Does it, then, cross the vast ranges of the Himalaya in its northern migration? or does it not rather find on the southern slopes and in the valleys of those mountains all the conditions suitable for nesting?”; and he adds in a note, “It is extremely doubtful whether any passerine bird which frequents the plains of India during the cooler months crosses to the north of the snowy ranges of the Himalaya after quitting the plains to escape the rainy season or the intense heat of summer.”

Now, it is quite certain, as I have shown in ‘Lahore to Yarkand,’ that several of our Indian passerine birds do cross the entire succession of Snowy Ranges which divide the plains of India from Central Asia, and it is tolerably certain from my researches and those of numerous contributors that L. cristatus breeds only north of these ranges.  True, Tickell gives the following account of the nidification of this species in the plains of India:—­

“Nest found in large bushes or thickets, shallow, circular, 4 inches in diameter, rather coarsely made of fine twigs and grass.  Eggs three, ordinary; 29/32 by 21/32:  pale rose-colour, thickly sprinkled with blood-red spots, with a darkish livid zone at the larger end.—­June.”  But Tickell, though he warns us at the commencement of his paper (Journal As.  Soc. 1848, p. 297) of the “attempts at duplicity of which the wary oologist must take good heed,” gives the egg of the Sarus as plain white, and says he has seen upwards of a dozen like this, those of the Roller as full deep Antwerp blue, those of Cypselus palmarum as white with large spots of deep claret-brown, and so on, and it is quite clear that his supposed eggs and nest of L. cristatus belonged to one of the Bulbuls.

Of more than fifty oologists who have collected for me at different times in hills and plains, from the Nilghiris to Huzara on the one side, and to Sikhim on the other, not one has ever met with a nest of L. cristatus.  This is doubtless purely negative evidence, but it is still entitled to considerable weight.

From the valleys of the Beas and the Sutlej, as also from Kumaon and Gurhwal, these Shrikes seem to disappear entirely during the summer, and they are then, as we also know, found breeding in Yarkand.  It is only in the latter part of the autumn that they reappear in the former named localities, finding their way by the commencement of the cold season to the foot of the hills.

Mr. R. Thompson, to quote one of many close observers, remarks:—­“This bird appears regularly at Huldwanee and Rumnugger at the foot of the Kumaon Hills during the cold weather, confining itself to thick hedges and deep groves of trees.  Where it goes to in summer I cannot say, it certainly does not remain in our hills.”