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sionally the effect of a clouded cap; some in addition to the 
multitudinous specks exhibit bold red blotches, or dark streaky 
clouds, and some again are very feebly coloured, a nearly 
uniform pale dingy buff, with scarcely a trace of blotches or even 
specks of a darker hue. In shape, the eggs are commonly a 
broad oval, slightly more pointed at one end, of a dull, gloss- 
less and slightly chalky, but still compact texture. The egg 
lining is white or slightly reddish white. 
Elsewhere I have thus described the eggs: “A very great 
variation in shape is observable in the eggs of this species. 
They are all a somewhat broad, but generally very perfect 
oval. In texture, they are rather fine, but at the same time (if 
IT may so express it) chalky, and they are perfectly devoid of 
gloss. The eggs, as a rule, are a longer oval than those of Fulco 
Peregrinus, and are scarcely ever so richly coloured as the latter 
often are. The coloration is of course of the true Falcon type. 
Some eggs are of a nearly uniform pale dingy yellowish brown, 
blanching towards one extremity or the other, indistinctly cloud- 
ed, blotched or mottled with a somewhat deeper and redder brown. 
Others are a nearly uniform red brown, with scarcely any traces 
of distinct markings; others have a nearly pure white, reddish 
white, pale dingy yellow, brownish yellow or reddish brown 
ground, more or less boldly, extensively and thickly blotched 
and clouded or even freckled, mottled, and streaked with more 
or less bright or deep brick or blood red. As a rule, the mark- 
ings are not very bold or sharply defined, in but few is there any 
decided tendency towards capping at either end, and all have 
a more or less freckled and dotted appearance. These eggs 
fade much as time passes, but when first found many of them 
are, to an oologist’s eye, perfect pictures.” 
In size they vary from 2°15 to 1°85 in length, and from 1°65 
to 1:48 in breadth, but of ninety-eight egos measured, the average 
size was 2°01 by 1:57. I once noticed a curious trait in this bird, 
somewhat similar to that related above of Gyps Bengalensis. 
On the 2nd of March, 1866 near Soj in the Mynpoorie district, 
T found a nest of these birds on what had been a large Peepul 
tree, but which, owing to the continual cutting of its branches 
for the elephants of the Chohan Rajahs of the neighbourhood, 
had become a gaunt, white spectre-like thing with two or three 
huge nearly bare arms, each with a dense cluster of leafy twigs 
near the extremity, and smaller similar clusters at odd angles of 
the branches. The tree stood solitary in the midst of a wide 
tract of land overflowed during the rains, but at the time I speak 
of, waste and parched, with no other vegetation for a good mile 
in any direction, but patches of down-trodden, withered rush. 
