12 Mr. A. Hume on Indian Ornithology. 



Some of the Bulbul's eggs that we have taken earlier in the 

 season were much less strongly coloured than any of those ob- 

 tained to day^ and presented a very different appearance. With 

 a pinkish-white ground, and moderately thickly but very uni- 

 formly speckled all over with small spots of light purplish-grey, 

 light reddish-brown^ and very dark brown, the egg scarcely 

 seems to belong to the same bird as the boldly-blotched or 

 richly-mottled specimens. In size, too, the eggs of this bird 

 vary very greatly ; some few are fully 1 inch in length, while 

 a good many do not exceed '75 in., and in width they vary from 

 •562 to "687. In shape, too, they differ scarcely less; some are 

 long and perfectly oval, some nearly round, some are nearly 

 alike at both ends, while some are almost cones based on hemi- 

 spheres. Close to our own gate is a pretty neem-tree [Melia 

 azadirachta), a species now naturalized in Provence and other 

 parts of the south of France. High up in a fork, a small nest 

 was visible, and, projecting over it on one side, a black forked 

 tail that could belong to nothing but the King-Crow, of which the 

 local representative here is Dicrurus macrocercus. Of this bird 

 we had already taken, during the last six weeks, at least fifty 

 nests ; and in many cases where we had left the empty nest, 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 hardwickii) above described, will continue laying even 

 after the nest has been twice plundered. The very day after the nest 

 has been robbed 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 off in due course. It might be supposed that 

 immediately 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 

 other Hirundinida being often to be seen busy with love's 

 pleasing labour before their eggs have been well stowed away by 

 the collector. But this will not account for instances that I 

 have observed of birds in confinement, which, separated from 

 the male before they had laid their full number, and then later, 



