16 Mr. A. Hume on Indian Ornithulogtj. 



their appearance there only a month previously. On digging 

 into the bank, we found the holes ail connected with each other 

 in one place or another^ so that apparently every Mynah could 

 get into or out from its nest by any one of the hundred and odd 

 holes in the face of the excavation. The holes averaged about 

 3 inches in diameter, and twisted and turned up and down, 

 right and left, in a wonderful manner. Each hole terminated 

 in a more or less well-marked bulb (if I may use the term) or 

 egg-chamber, situated from 4 to 7 feet from the face of the 

 bank. The egg- chamber was floored with a loose ne&t of grass, 

 a few feathers, and, in many instances, scraps of snake-skins. It 

 is not easy to discover what induces so many birds that build in 

 holes in banks to select, out of the infinite variety of things 

 organic and inorganic, pieces of snake-skin for their nests. They 

 are at best harsh unmanageable things, not so warm as feathers, 

 which are ten times as numerous, nor so soft as cotton or old 

 rags, which lie about broadcast, nor so cleanly as dry twigs 

 and grass. Can it be that snakes have any repugnance to their 

 " worn-out weeds," that they dislike these mementos of their 

 fall*, and that birds breeding in holes into which snakes are likely 

 to come, by instinct select these exuvicB as " scare-snakes " ? 

 In some of the nests we found three or four callow young; 

 but in the majority of the terminal chambers were four more 

 or less incubated eggs. These are fully as glossy as, and of a 

 somewhat deeper blue (or greenish-blue," as the case may be) 

 than those of the Pied Starling, and are moreover smaller; in 

 length none exceeded 1*125 in., and some were only -QOG long, 

 while in breadth they varied from "812 to "75 ; the average 

 I take to be about 1*.062 by -781. I noticed that the tops of 

 all the mud pillars (which had been left standing to measure 

 the work by) had been drilled through and through by the 

 Mynahs, obviously not for breeding-purposes, as not one of 

 them contained the vestige of a nest, but either for amusement 



* When the snake," says an Arabic commentator, " tempted Adam, it 

 was a winged animal. To punish its misdeeds the Almighty deprived it 

 of wings, and condemned it thereafter to creep for ever on its belly, add- 

 ing, as a perpetual reminder to it of its trespass, a command for it to cast 

 its skin yearly." 



