PYRRIIULA. 



151 



difference in the breadth, which is 0-77 to 0-81. The two most 

 stumpy ones have the clouded zone round the smaller end, and on 

 another egg the markings .so graphically described by Mr. Hume 

 do not form a zone, but entirely cover the large end.'' 



Major Wardlaw Eamsay says, writing of Afghanistan : — " I 

 shot a male specimen, one of a pair, on the Peiwar range at about 

 9000 feet . . , The pair was evidently breeding." 



Mr. Brooks thus describes the eggs : — " Texture smooth and 

 similar to that of the English Hawfinch's egg. In shape the egg 

 is broad and rapidly diminishes towards the small end. There is 

 a slight gloss on the egg. Ground-colour pale greenish grey, with 

 a very few blackish-brown spots over the whole surface, and at the 

 larger end, and very near the end, is a zone of lines and spots of 

 the same dark umber-brown, intermixed with some dark grey- 

 coloured lines and spots of a Bunting-like character. Some eggs 

 of the English Hawfinch in character strongly resemble the eggs 

 of this kind, both in ground-colour and mode of marking." 



The egg is at present one of the very rarest in our collections, 

 so I add also my own description. 



The eggs of this species, to judge from the specimen I possess, 

 given me by Mr. Brooks and taken by Captain Cock, are a very 

 pale greenish grey or greyish white tinged with green, with nume- 

 rous blackish-brown tangled lines, some thick and bold, some very 

 fine, t\\-isted about and intertwined in a small zone imuiediately 

 about the large end, all more or less underlaid by faint inky-purple 

 clouds. Besides this zone a very few blackish spots and one or 

 two streaks appear on other portions of the egg's surface, but 

 these are very few and far between. 



The egg measures 1'03 by 0'8 inch. 



Subfamily FRINGILLIN^. 



745. Pyrrlmla aurantiaca, Grould. The Oraiuje Bullfnch. 



Pyrvliula aurantiaca, Gould, Jenl B. Ind. n, p. 390 ; Hume, Rough 

 'Draft N. ^- E. no. 732. 



I know nothing personally of the nidification of the Orange 

 Bullfinch. Captain Cock says : — " I shot this bird in the Sonamerg 

 Valley (Cashmere) in June. They were then in pairs and evidently 

 just about to breed. I did not succeed in taking their nests owing 

 to my time being so limited, and the following year, when I wished 

 to enter Cashmere to continue my observations from the end of 

 June, where I had left off, to the "end of August, I could not go 

 because I could not get a pass, there being none available. Had 

 I been a loafer or anything else than a British officer, no one 

 would have gainsayed ray going." 



