62 Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker on the [Ibis, 



in the Surma Valley to Margherita in Lakhimpur in the 

 south. It also occurs in Manipur, the Looshai Hillsj and 

 the upper Western Chin Hills. 



The only account hitherto published of this bird^s breeding 

 is the one by myself, which appeared in vol. xi. of the 

 Bombay Natural History Society's Journal, but since then 

 I have been fortunate enough to take other eggs. 



The first nest found by me was taken at Gunjong, 

 North Cachar Hills, on the 13th of March, 1889 ; I was 

 prowling about one evening with my gun, shooting an odd 

 cock Jungle-fowl or two for the pot and taking notes and 

 observations on birds generally, when I noticed what seemed 

 to be a small black-and-white bird disappear into a hole in a 

 branch of a tree high overhead. Knowing that there were 

 no Woodpeckers or Barbets anything like this bird, and 

 anxious to ascertain what it could be, I hammered on the 

 trunk of the tree until it reappeared, when I at once shot it, 

 and greatly to my surprise found it to be a White-thighed 

 Falconet. 



At this time I had not read Bingham's account of the nest- 

 ing of M. ccerulescens, so that I thought the Falconet must 

 have gone into the Barbet^s hole to rob it of eggs or young, 

 and in order to see if this was tiie case, I climbed up the tree 

 and opened out the hole. At first I could feel no eggs in it, 

 but brought out two or three haudfuls of beetles' wings and 

 other remains of insects, and then felt a single egg lying in 

 the bottom of the hole, which I secured and brought down. 

 This egg, though it had been originally white, and was in 

 size much the same as that of a Blue-eared Barbet, was 

 of so totally different a texture that I saw at once it did not 

 belong to any bird of that family. In size it measured 

 29*1 X 22*3 mm., and in shape was a very obtuse blunt oval; 

 both ends were practically the same in size, whilst the texture 

 was half-way between that of Barbet's eggs and of eggs of the 

 Lark-heeled Cuckoos of the Centropus group. The chalky 

 covering is not nearly so thick or so crumbly as it is on the 

 eggs of those birds, but there is enough to make a distinct 

 covering which can be scratched off with a knife. The whole 



