276 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVIII. 



" The nest contained three eggs of 0. ferrea besides the cuckoos, 

 and was a fairly open one in the cleft of a rock. Two days later I 

 found it rifled, possibly by a jay or a magpie ( Urocissa flavirostris). 



" Another nest of 0. ferrea, which I found close by, contained no 

 cuckoo's eggs, probably because it was so admirably concealed. 



" I have been hanging about with a gun in the vicinity of these 

 nests, hoping to get a female cuckoo, but although the females of 

 canorus have been flying about, further up the hill on both sides, 

 none have as yet come into the actual vicinity of the nests. 



" Trochalopterum lineatum nests all over the top of the hill, and 

 I have examined eggs in several nests, but found no cuckoo's 

 eggs." 



This letter was written on the 5th June, and was promptly followed 

 by one on the 17th, telling me how the riddle of the blue egg had 

 been solved. 



In this second letter, Major Magrath writes : — 



" Some two or three weeks ago, I sent you a blue cuckoo's egg, 

 taken in the nest of Ore kola ferrea. 



" I have now to report a more important find, which will interest 

 you, and which has, I think, at last put the question of a blue egg 

 of canorus beyond doubt. 



" After finding the first cuckoo's egg (blue) in the nest of 0. 

 ferrea, I hunted up other nests and have so far found six of this 

 species. None of the remaining five contained cuckoo's eggs ; but 

 one contained a young cuckoo, which was, I think, canorus. This 

 young bird came to grief in a storm a day or two later. I then 

 turned my attention to the nests of Larvivora brunnea, a common 

 species up here. They are such skulkers, and the females so difficult 

 to observe, that I have only succeeded, so far, in getting two 

 nests. 



" In nest No. 2, L. brunnea, I found the blue cuckoo's egg now 

 sent you and which was pretty well incubated. 



" As I wrote before, the only cuckoos which occur here, to my 

 knowledge, are canorus and saturatus. 



"On June 6th, I did certainly hear a solitary Hierococcyx sparve- 

 roides about three miles along the ridge of the south of this ; but 

 this bird was probably a solitary straggler, as I have not since heard 



