18 MTTSCICAPLDJE. 



the dark streaks and blotches, mostly at the thick end, so peculiar 

 to all Flycatchers' eggs." 



Captain Hutton remarks : " I took a nest of this species on 

 18th April, 1848, in a deep and thickly wooded glen at an elevation 

 of 4500 feet. It was placed against the moss-covered trunk of a 

 large tree, growing by the side of a mountain-stream, and was 

 neatly and beautifully constructed of green moss, fixed in the shape 

 of a watch-pocket at the head of a bed to the mosses of the tree 

 (with which it was completely blended) by numerous threads of 

 spiders' webs. The lining was of the finest grass-stalks, no thicker 

 than horsehair, and beneath the body of the nest depended a long 

 bunch of mosses, fastened to the tree with spiders' webs, and serving 

 as a support or cushion on which the nest rested securely. Within 

 this beautifully constructed fabric were four small eggs of a dull 

 white colour, with a faint olive tinge, and minutely spotted with 

 pale greenish brown, and having a broad and well-defined ring of 

 the same near the larger end. The eggs were set hard." 



Writing from Murree, Colonel C. H. T. Marshall says : 

 " Several nests answering to Jerdon's (i. e. Button's) description, 

 like watch-pockets fastened up on the trees, 6000 to 7000 feet up." 



Mr. Ehodes W. Morgan, writing from South India, says : 

 " This Flycatcher breeds in March and April, building a nest of 

 fine moss, which is attached like a pocket to the mossy trunk of 

 some large shola tree. The nest is almost invariably built under a 

 branch or some other projection to shelter it from the rain, and is 

 very securely attached with cobwebs to prevent it, from being blown 

 down. The eggs are almost always three in number, of a very 

 faint greenish-grey colour, with a wide zone of the same (but darker) 

 colour at the larger end. Dimensions of one 0'62 inch in length 

 by 0'51 in breadth. I have never found its nest on the plains." 



The eggs are moderately broad ovals, scarcely compressed 

 towards the smaller end. The ground-colour varies from white to 

 a dingy yellowish white, and they have a broad conspicuous con- 

 fluent zone of spots and blotches towards the large end, the colour 

 of which is a mottled combination of dingy yellowish brown and dingy 

 purplish or brownish grey. The rest of the egg is more or less 

 thickly or thinly spotted, speckled, or freckled with very pale dingy 

 brown. The eggs sometimes have a slight gloss, but more commonly 

 are almost glossless. 



In length they vary from 0'58 to 0'65 of an inch, and in breadth 

 from 0-46 to 0-5 of an inch, but the average of a large series is 

 0-61 by 0-48, nearly. 



593. Niltava grandis (Blyth). The Large Niltava. 



Niltava grandis (Bl.), Jerd. B. 2nd. i, p. 476 ; Hume, Rouyh Draft 

 N. $ E. no. 316. 



Dr. Jerdon observes of the Great Niltava that " its nest is very 

 like that of N. sundara, being loosely made of moss, and placed in 

 similar situations, and the eggs only differ in their larger size. 



