344 Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker on the 



5th May: two eggs, measuring 0"-52 x 0"-39 aiid 0"-51 

 X 0"-39. 



7tli May : three eggs, on the point of hatching, and not 

 measured. 



11th May: two young and an addled egg, also not 

 measured. 



12th May: three eggs, measuring 0"-54x0"-41, 0"-53x 

 0"-41, and 0"-53x0"-41. 



12th May : nest with three young a day or two old. 



18th May: three eggs, measuring 0"-56x0"-43, 0"-54 x 

 0"-42, and 0"-54 + 0"-42. 



The eggs are white, and are freckled with specks and very 

 small irregular blotches of pale greyish pink or pale brown, 

 some so pale as to be hardly perceptible unless closely looked 

 into, while none are very dark. In one or two eggs there 

 are also a few short irregular lines of the same character. 

 In one clutch and one egg of another clutch these markings 

 are fairly numerous and comparatively dark, especially at the 

 larger end ; in the other eggs they are very scanty and 

 feebly defined, more particularly in one j)air, where they 

 look as if some one had been trying to work them out with 

 a considerable degree of success. In shape they are rather 

 broad obtuse ovals, very little compressed towards the smaller 

 end, and the texture is the same as in the eggs of ^. igni- 

 cauda. 



54. ^THOPYGA DABRYi. [Outes, op. cit. ii. p. 353.) 

 This form of Sun-bird seems to be absent from the whole 

 of the district, except the ranges on the extreme east, and 

 thence into Manipur, where it was doubtfully, but probably 

 correctly, identified by Hume. None of my correspondents 

 in the plains of Cachar and Sylhet have met with it. 



On the 7th May, 1891, I took a nest of this species and 

 captured the female on it ; the male I failed to snare, nor 

 did I get any but the most cursory glances of it, not sufl[i- 

 cient for the purposes of identification. The nest difi'ered 

 most strikingly from any others of the Nectariniidae that I 

 have seen, in that it was shaped a very regular oval, instead 



