315 
try lying partly in the Mynpooree and partly in the Etawah 
district, 1, many years ago, shot a large adult and saw several 
others quite at the close of May. An unusually heavy rainfall 
had filled all the lakes, or, as we should call them in Norfolk, 
broads, to overflowing, and the unsettled state of the country 
had, in a great measure prevented the customary agricultural 
drain on them, and many of them, commonly dry at this season, 
were still extensive sheets of water. I can scarcely doubt that 
these birds bred there that year. 
In Oudh, native fowlers informed me, that they bred in 
swampy grounds, trans-Gogra. Mr. F. R. Blewitt writing from 
Jhansie, in the neighbourhood of which there are several consi- 
derable lakes, says that he has procured the Marsh Harrier 
there throughout the hot weather and rains. 
T cannot find any record of its eggs having as yet been found 
in India: of its nidification in the British Isles, Mr. Yarrell 
says, ‘The nest is placed on the ground, among long coarse 
grass, in a bunch of rushes, fern or furze, or at the base of a 
bush. The nest is formed of small sticks, rushes, or long grass : 
the eggs are three or four in number, of an oval shape, rather 
pointed at one end, white, two inches one line (2°08) in length, 
and one inch six lines (1°5) in breadth.” 
Mr. Hewitson says, ‘The eggs of the Marsh Harrier, 
although for the most part white, or slightly tinted with blue, 
are sometimes also spotted and smeared with brown, in the 
same manner as those of the Hen Harrier.” 
This species “ almost always breeds on the ground, but will 
sometimes, assuming the habits of the Common Buzzard, breed 
.in the fork of a large tree, in which place, Montague says, he has 
himself found it ; in such a situation, the nest would, as he de- 
scribes it, be formed of sticks and such ike material. In the 
fen countries, its usual resort, the nest is composed of so large 
a quantity of flags, reeds and sedges, as to raise it a foot or a 
foot and a half above the ground. The eggs are usually four, 
sometimes, though not often, fivein number.” Mr. Hewitt 
considers the dimensions above quoted, from Mr..Yarrell, as too 
large. His own figure represents a very round, oval egg mea- 
suring 1:93 X 1°59. 
This species, occurs in every country in Kurope, from north 
to south ; in all the Islands of the Mediterranean ; throughout 
tains no single specimen of a female in this stage of plumage. I note that 
in some old males, the chin and breast are almost pale fawn colour, with 
darker streaks, while in others the ground colour of these parts is a rich and 
very red brown. 
