Rev. H. B. Tristram on the Ornithology of Palestine. 205 



House-Sparrow, but larger, more closely speckled, some of them 

 a dark brown, others of an umber-colour. All have a very fiue 

 polish, such as I have not noticed on the egg of any other 

 species of the tribe. We found families of young birds fully 

 fledged in the Lebanon and Hermon districts in June. The first 

 plumage is of a russet hue, and without the characteristic yellow 

 spot on the breast, but possesses the white bar at the extremity 

 of the tail. 



One day when we were encamped above Kulat-esh-Shukif, I 

 was returning from a long tramp on the flat plain of Upper 

 Galilee, without a solitary Partridge for supper in my bag, or 

 anything more choice for the scalpel than a few Rock-Sparrows, 

 Short-toed Larks, and Tawny Pipits, when I espied what looked 

 like a hen Sparrow, dusting itself in the mule-path in front of 

 me, uttering meanwhile a most Sparrow-like chirp. I was near 

 our tent, and, by way of discharging ray gun, I fired at it. 

 Seeing the white bar on its tail as it fell, I took it for a young 

 Petronia stulta, but soon discovered my mistake. We after- 

 wards procured several others, but only on the bare plateau 

 north of Hermon, and in Coele Syria. One morning in riding 

 across the arid plain of the Sahra, not far west of Damascus, 

 we came on a neat compact nest in a very low bush, not two 

 feet from the ground, containing four white eggs with a few 

 black spots, exactly like a diminutive Golden Oriole^s [Oriolus 

 galbula). Completely puzzled as to the ownership of this 

 pretty little domestic establishment, we thought it worth while 

 to dismount and conceal ourselves in the neighbourhood till 

 the proprietor should return. Soon the hen bird, cautiously 

 hopping among the scrub, resumed her place on the nest. 

 After watching her for a little while, we put her off, and 

 secured her, as well as the sitting of four hard-set eggs. A few 

 days afterwards I took another similar nest of five eggs in a bush on 

 the bare hillside, near Zebdany. This style of e^^, so strangely 

 aberrant from the character of the rest of the family, is analogous 

 to the exceptional egg of the North-American Melospiza lincolni, 

 which lays a pure white egg, while all its congeners have eggs 

 in the familiar Sparrow-style. But not only does the discovery 

 of its nidification mark the distinct character of this desert bird ; 



