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egos is the usual greyish white, unspotted in about half the 
specimens and exhibiting more or less conspicuous markings in 
others. Of the markings, the most common are a few large 
blotches and splashes of yellowish brown accompanied by pretty 
numerous specks or spots of the same colour, distributed pretty 
evenly, over the whole egg. In some, the blotches are more 
extensive and numerous, and exhibit a tendency to cluster 
towards one end more than the other, and the colour becomes 
a reddish brown or in some a purplish brown, while in others 
all three colours are mingled. In no egg that I possess is more 
than one-third of the surface covered with markings, and as a 
rule, even the richest coloured eggs (and these are compara- 
tively rare) have not above a seventh or eighth of the surface 
of the egg covered with markings. 
Elsewhere I have remarked, “The eggs vary extraordi- 
narily both in size and shape from a very long oval, much 
pointed at one end, to almost a sphere; but the ordinary type, 
is a rather broad oval, slightly narrower at one end. In colour, 
they are most commonly white, with a very faint tinge of bluish 
green ; but many of them are more or less streaked, spotted, or 
blotched, with different shades of brown, or reddish brown, and 
occasionally purple of varying intensity, and here and there, 
one may be found richly marked with sharply defined spots 
and blotches of bright, though slightly brownish, red. Many 
of the eggs, when taken from the nest, have a faint gloss on 
them ; but they lose this by washing, and the eggs become so 
soiled during incubation, that it usually 7s necessary to wash 
them. The texture is generally close and compact, the egg 
lining is a pure sea-green.” 
In size the eggs vary from 2°35 to 3°25 in length and from 
18 to 2°25 in breadth; but the average of one huudred and 
fifty-nine eggs measured, was 2°63 by 2°11. 
Mr. Wilham Blewitt remarks, that he found great numbers of 
the nests of this bird, in the neighbourhood of Hansie, during 
January, February, March, and April 1868. None contained 
more than two eggs, and many of these latter were considerably 
incubated. ‘The nests were without exception in dense Keekur 
trees (Acacia Arabica) at heights of from sixteen to twenty-four 
feet from the ground. The nests, sometimes loosely and at others 
densely constructed, were composed of twigs and small branches 
of Keekur, Ber (Z. Jujube) and similar thorny trees ; more than 
one had a thin lining of grass or leaves, but the majority 
had no lining. In diameter (excluding straggling ends) the 
nests varied from sixteen inches to nearly two feet, and in depth 
from barely four to nearly nine inches. 
