172 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVI. 



laid about. The interior was neatly lined with fibre, and the entrance hole 

 was just above the ground. There were five eggs, quite fresh. I ran a tape 

 lightly over the rough structure, which measured 17" across and 11" from the 

 upper part of entrance to back of nest. The entrance measured 3" x 4". 



I took three eggs : they measured as follows : — 

 1" x 0-85". . -95" x S". 1" x 0-H5" 



Colour as described in Vol. II, page 28:3, of Hume's ' Nests and Eggs,' 2nd 

 edition, Oates. 



G. H. EVANS, F.L.S., Major. 

 Eangoon, 10th August 1904. 



No. XX.— VEGETATION IN SIND. 



( Extract from an address entitled " The Province of Sind," by H. M. Bird- 

 wood, C.S.I., M.A., LL.D., late President of the Bombay Natural History 



Society, read before the Society of Arts, London, on 23rd April 1903.) 

 Within the area watered by the canals all vegetation is luxuriant. Where the 

 soil is deep and rich, as it is in most of the alluvial tracts, the cereal crops 

 develop a growth unknown on used-up lands elsewhere. At Jacobabad, a body 

 of spearmen, riding through a field of "Jowari," the great Indian millet 

 (Sorghum vulgare), have been known to effectually screen themselves, horses, 

 spears, and all, in the lofty shelter of the cornstalks. In the forest reserves 

 near the Fuleli at Miani, the " Babul, " or gum Arabic tree (Acacia arabica), 

 and the " Kandi " (Prosopis spicigera), the two commonest forest trees of Sind, 

 attain a height and girth beyond anything seen in Guzerat.the garden of India, 

 or the Deccan, where the Babul is very much "At Home." In the Collector's 

 garden at Larkhana there is a splendid Ailanthus excelsa, excelling in size and 

 vigour of stem, branches, and its great pinnate leaves, any of the fine trees 

 in the grove so well known to travellers at one of the villages on the road from 

 Wattar to Mahableshwar. The "Tali," or Blackwood (D alb gia lati folia), also 

 thrives in Upper Sind, but not so luxuriantly as in the neighbourhood of Agra. 

 At Shikarpur, the magnificent avenue of " Sirras " trees (Albizzia lebbek)— an 

 entirely modern growth of British times— gives a most grateful shelter from 

 the hot son of March or April ; nor can I soon forget the plantation of Chinese 

 Tallow-trees (Sapium sebiferum) near the little English cemetery at Sehwan, 

 below the massive mud fort on the Indus, which, some say, was built by 

 Alexander, and some, by Shem, the son of Noah — with what authority, in either 

 case, no one can perhaps say. I have grown these shapely trees, which, in 

 general contour and size, are comparable to the Birch, on the red soil of 

 Malabar Hill in Bombay and on the sandy soil of the University Garden on the 

 Esplanade, and successfully ; but they have never displayed there the rich 

 sunset-tints, purple and crimson and gold, with which they glorify the 

 landscape in the crisp, chilly evenings of the late autumn in Sind. 

 Nor will any Sindhi be slow to pay his tribute to the pervading grace 

 of the endless self-sown tamarisk thickets of every landscape in Sind of which 



