00 
less thickly lined with leaves or occasionally grass. As a rule 
they lay two eggs, but it it not uncommon to find a single, fully 
incubated egg. . 
Normally, the shape of the eggs, of this species, is nearly sphe- 
rical, and even the most aberrant are a very broad oval. Typi- 
cally, they are very highly coloured eggs, and remind one much 
of the eggs of the Huropean Honey Buzzard. I have a speci- 
men which corresponds closely with the second figure in Hewit- 
son’s Pl. XV. and I have others fully as richly coloured, but of 
a different type. The ground colour varies from white or 
pinkish white to buffy yellow, and the markings from reddish 
brown to intense blood red. In one, the markings are a rather 
dingy though deep purple. In another, the whole egg is buff 
brown, faintly but thickly mottled and clouded with yellowish 
brown. Another egg, with a reddish brown ground, is entirely 
capped, and thickly mottled, over the whole of the rest of the 
surface, with a very dull but deep cinnamon red, reminding 
one forcibly of some of the richest coloured Neophrons. As a 
rule, these eggs are glossless, but one or two have a trace of 
gloss about them. ‘The lining, or rather the colour of the egg- 
shell, when held up against the light, varies from greenish 
white to dingy yellowish green. 
In size, the eggs vary from 1°82 to 2°22 in length, and from 
1:55 to 1°85 in breadth, but the average of ten eggs measured 
was 2°03 by 1°72. 
gined with fawn or creamy white, that there is almost more of this than the 
brown visible, and this is not dependant on age or sex, or even altogether on 
the colour of the lower parts, since, though I have never observed this in any 
birds which were of a dark hue beneath, I have specimens of which the 
entire ground of the lower parts is creamy white, the wing coverts of which 
show no trace ofa paler margin. One old bird with tail and wings bearing the 
signs of maturity above indicated, will have the whole of the lores, forehead, 
round the eyes, and top of the head dark slaty gray, with a black brown 
occipital crest of three feathers about an inch long. The occiput and back of 
the neck, very dark rufous brown, darker shafted, and the rest of the upper 
parts and sides dark brown. The whole lower parts pure white ; the tea- 
thers of the chin with very narrow, dark brown, longitudinal, central stripes, 
and those of all the rest of the lower parts with similar, rather wider stripes, 
and large, broad, subterminal, pale, rufous brown blotches, the axillaries and 
some of the thigh coverts being distinctly banded. Another old bird not 
only has the whole lores, forehead, crown, sides of the head and occiput 
bluish grey, with only a tinge of brown on the occiput, but the whole brown 
of the upper parts, which is pale compared with the majority of specimens, 
has more or less of a greyish tint, some feathers being browner and some 
greyer, but all pale, and with no trace of a crest. The whole lower parts a 
nearly uniform, wood brown, (paler on the throat) with the shaft (and the 
shafts only) dark brown. 
Almost every possible combination of the varying plumage, and shades of 
colour, of different parts, above described, may be met with. 
