138 Letters, Announcements, &^c. 



haps, stems fully 3 inches distant, together with all the inter- 

 mediate ones, will be found more or less webbed together. 



Once only did T find a nest of a different type. This was 

 built amongst the stems of a common prickly labiate marsh- 

 plant which has white and mauve flowers. There was a strag- 

 gling framework of fine grass, firmly netted together with cob- 

 webs, and a very scanty lining of down. 



The nest was egg-shaped, and the aperture on one side near 

 the top. Mr. Brooks, I believe, once obtained a similar one ; 

 but all the others, that any of us have ever got, have been of the 

 type first described, which corresponds closely, it seems to me, 

 with Passler's account. As regards the eggs, all that we get in 

 India belong to one and the same type, which type differs 

 from any of those that Dr. Bree, following Moquin-Tandon, 

 figures. His examples are all perfectly spotless eggs, one pink, 

 another bluish- white, and a third a pretty dark bluish-green. 

 Our eggs, on the contrary, are white, with, when fresh and un- 

 blown, a delicate pink hue, due not to the shell itself, but to 

 its contents, which partially shew through it. Every egg is 

 spotted (commonly most thickly towards the large end) with, 

 as a rule, exceedingly minute red, reddish-purple, and pale 

 purple specks, thus resembling, though smaller, more glossy, 

 and far less thickly speckled, the eggs of Franklinia bucha- 

 nani. 



These are beyond all question the eggs of our Indian species, 

 and the only type that I have yet met with here ; the question 

 of course remains, whether our Indian Prima cursitans (Frankl.) 

 is really identical with the European C. schoenicola (Bp.) . For 

 my part, I believe it to be so ; and the apparent extraordinary 

 variability of the eggs in different parts of the world affords 

 ground for serious consideration. The eggs that I have seen 

 were found at different points of a tract of country measuring 

 some six hundred miles from east to west, and three hundred 

 from north to south ; but throughout this tract only the one 

 type that I have above described appears to prevail. 



Of course even our eggs vary somewhat. Of one nest I wrote 

 at the time I found it : — " The eggs are rather short ovals, 

 slightly pointed at one end, with a white ground, thickly 



