]06 NATURAL HISTORY. 



difficulty; it contained five incubated eggs, and on searching 

 the other nests on this tree, I found that in each case, 

 when the eggs were incubated, the number was five also, any- 

 lesser number proved to be fresh. A few hundred yards away 

 1 came upon another colony, and on searching the nests, I found, 

 them to contain from one to five incubated eggs ; at the bottom 

 of the tree, lay several good nests, that had evidently been cut 

 down by squirrels, and in some of these I found eggs; here was 

 the clue. Every one must have noticed the numbers of half-finished 

 nests, in every colony, that for some reason or the other have 

 been abandoned j what more likely than, the squirrels having cut 

 down a nest, before the full complement of eggs had been laid in it, 

 the birds should finish laying, either in one of the incompleted 

 nests, to be afterwards completed or not, (I have often found eggs 

 in these half-finished nests), or in one belonging to a neighbour. 

 This theory accounts for a larger and a smaller number of eggs 

 than usual being found in a nest. The squirrels were unable to 

 get at the nests in the Babool tree standing in the water, and in 

 consequence they had complete clutches of eggs in them. I 

 intended watching this tree again during the following season, 

 but having been transferred to Saugor, I could not do so, but soon 

 after the breaking of the monsoon, I found not far from Saugor, 

 a clump of babool trees in a similar situation, and as the bayas 

 had commenced building upon them, I had an excellent opportunity 

 of testing my theory, and later in the season, I found, as I had 

 anticipated that the nests contained five eggs each, in a few cases 

 four only. I am therefore .fully persuaded that the normal 

 number of eggs, in Rajputana and the Central Provinces at all 

 events, is four or five, oftener five than four; this I know to be 

 contrary to the generally conceived opinion, but I think that the 

 facts I have adduced, go far to prove the correctness of my views. 

 Mr. Hume, speaking of the nests themselves, says : — The long 

 tubular entrances that the male often goes on building after the 

 female is sitting reaches in one nest I have preserved to a length 

 of 11 inches," and again "as a rule these entrance passages do 

 not exceed six inches in length." A nest that I took at Saugor 

 has the tube 25 inches long, another procured at the same time 

 and place has it 24 inches, and straege to say, the lower portion is 

 incorporated with an unfinished nest, evidently meant to steady it ; 

 fact evinces more intelligence on the part of. these birds, 



