DICRURUS. 199 



during tlie last six weeks at least fifty nests, and in many cases 

 where we liad left the empty nest in statu quo, we found it a week 

 later with a fresh batch of eggs laid therein. Many birds will 

 never return to a nest which has once been robbed, but others, like 

 the King-Crow and the Little Shrike (Lanius vittatus), will continue 

 laying even after the nest has been twice robbed. The very day after 

 the nest has been cleared of perhaps four slightly incubated eggs, a 

 fresh one that otherwise would assuredly never have seen the light 

 is laid, and that, too, a fertile egg, which, if not meddled with, will 

 be hatched ofi' in due course. It might be supposed that imme- 

 diately on discovering their loss, nature urged the birds to new 

 intercourse, the result of which was the fertile egg, and this, in 

 some cases, is probably really the case ; Martins and otliers of the 

 Swallow liind being often to be seen busy with ' love's pleasing 

 labour ' before their eggs have been well stowed away by the col- 

 lector. But this will not account for instances that I have 

 observed of birds in confinement, who separated from the male 

 before they had laid their full number, and then later, just when 

 they began to sit deprived of their eggs, straightway laid a second 

 set, neither so large nor so well coloured as the first, but still 

 fertile eggs that were duly hatched. But for the removal of the 

 first set, these subsequent eggs v/ould never have been developed 

 or laid. jN'ow, the theory has always been that the contact of the 

 sperm- and germ-cells causes the development and fertilization of 

 the latter. In these cases no fresh accession of sperm-cells was 

 possible, and hence it would seem as if in some birds the female 

 organs were able to store up living sperm-cells, which only work 

 to fertilize and develop ova in the event of some accident render- 

 ing it necessai'y, and which otherwise ultimately lose vitality and 

 pass away without action. 



"The nest of the King-Crow that we took was of the ordinary type ; 

 in fact I have noticed scarcely any difierence in the shape or mate- 

 rials of all the numerous nests of this common bird that I have yet 

 seen. They are all composed of tiny twigs and fine grass-stems, 

 and the roots of the khus-khus grass, as a rule, neatly and tightly 

 woven together, and exteriorly bound round with a good deal of 

 cobweb, in which a few feathers are sometimes entangled. The 

 cavity is broad and shallow, and at times lined with horsehair or 

 fine grass, but most commonly only with khus. The bottom of the 

 nest is very thin, but the sides or rim rather firm and thick ; iu 

 tliis case the cavity was 4 inches in diameter, and about 1^ in 

 depth, and contained three pure white glossless eggs. In the very 

 next tree, however (a mango, and this is perhaps their favourite 

 tree), was another similar nest, containing four eggs, slightly glossy, 

 with a salmon-pink tinge throughout, and numerous well-marked 

 brownish-red specks and spots, most numerous towards the large 

 end, looking vastly like Brobdiugnagian specimens of the Eocket- 

 bird's eggs. The variation in this bird's eggs is remarkable ; out 

 of more than one hundred eggs nearly one third have been pui'e 

 white, and between the dead glossless purely white egg and a 



