30 NATURAL HISTORY, 



Passing over questions of nomenclature, and shunning such a 

 Charybdis as the discrimination of difficult species (like Aquila 

 Nsevia), T consider that, in the remarks on distribution and on nests 

 and eggs in particular, Mr. Barnes has not only lost much good 

 material that our birds' nesting members would gladly have contri- 

 buted, but he has also not made as good use of his actual authorities as 

 he might have done. The care and fulness with which the nidification 

 of many birds is described, make me wonder that nothing is said of the 

 nests and eggs of many other birds, which are all more or less fully 

 dealt with in books that Mr. Barnes had before him when compiling 

 his work. For instance, Mr. Barnes says that he has been unable to as- 

 certain anything about the breeding of Elanus ccendeus, the black- 

 winged kite, whereas there is a full account (from the competent pen of 

 Mr. Davidson) in " Stray Feathers," Vol. viii., pp, 370 and 415, 

 to say nothing of Bree's " Birds of Europe," Vol. i. 



I may add that, on the 23rd October 1885, I had a nest with three 

 hard set eggs taken, and the two birds shot, at Tandalja, two miles 

 from Baroda, and that earlier in the same month I found a nest at 

 Tatarpura, six miles from Baroda, with young birds in it. The eggs 

 were, as Mr. Hume says somewhere, like u miniature Neophrons," 

 and not like Dr. Bree's figures. 



Again, while describing the eggs of the Prinias, Mr. Barnes omits to 

 point out that the mahogany-coloured eggs are laid by the species with 

 ten tail-feathers, while the birds with twelve tail-feathers lay eggs of a 

 different type. Of the eggs of Prinia gracilis and P. Ilodgsoni (the 

 two species are, I am convinced, identical, the latter being the 

 breeding plumage), Mr. Barnes says not a word. The eggs are 

 remarkable, being of two types of ground colour, viz., pure white 

 and pale blue, and being either unspotted, or speckled with light 

 red. There are, therefore, four varieties of the eggs of these tiny 

 birds. They are very common about Baroda, and breed along the 

 railway line. The eggs in all the twenty odd nests I found last 

 August were uniform in each nest, i.e., all in each nest were either 

 pure white, or pure bluish, or white, speckled red, or blue, speckled 

 red, but I have found the several types in different nests only a few 

 yards apart, and could see no external difference in the birds. 

 Again, Mr. Barnes is rather careless in saying of the tailor-bird, 

 O. sutorhtSy that i( occasionally the eggs are of a greenish white 

 colour." There are (as Mr. Hume has pointed out) two types of 

 ground colour, either pure white or pale greenish blue, but both types 



