PYERHULA. 151 



difference in the breadth, which is 0'77 to 0-81. The two most 

 stumpy ones have the clouded zone round the smaller end, and on 

 another egg the markings so graphically described by Mr. Hume 

 do not form a zone, but entirely cover the large end." 



Major Wardlaw Ramsay says, writing of Afghanistan : " I 

 shot a male specimen, one of a pair, on the Peiwar range at about 

 9000 feet . . . The pah- was evidently breeding." 



Mr. Brooks thus describes the eggs : " Texture smooth and 

 similar to that of the English Hawfinch's egg. In shape the egg 

 is broad and rapidly diminishes towards the small end. There is 

 a slight gloss on the egg. Ground-colour pale greenish grey, with 

 a very few blackish-brown spots over the whole surface, and at the 

 larger end, and very near the end, is a zone of lines and spots of 

 the same dark umber-brown, intermixed with some dark grey- 

 coloured lines and spots of a Bunting-like character. Some eggs 

 of the English Hawfinch in character strongly resemble the eggs 

 of this kind, both in ground-colour and mode of marking." 



The egg is at present one of the very rarest in our collections, 

 so I add also my own description. 



The eggs of this species, to judge from the specimen I possess, 

 given me by Mr. Brooks and taken by Captain Cock, are a very 

 pale greenish grey or greyish white tinged with green, with nume- 

 rous blackish-brown tangled lines, some thick and bold, some very 

 fine, twisted about and intertwined in a small zone immediately 

 about the large end, all more or less underlaid by faint inky-purple 

 clouds. Besides this zone a very few blackish spots and one or 

 two streaks appear on other portions of the egg's surface, but 

 these are very few and far between. 



The egg measures 1*03 by 0*8 inch. 



Subfamily FRINGILLIN^E. 



745. Pyrrhula aurantiaca, Gould. The Orange Bullfinch. 



Pyrrhula aurantiaca, Gould, Jercl S. 2nd. ii, p. 390 ; Hume, Rough 

 'Draft N. $ E. no. 732. 



I know nothing personally of the nidification of the Orange 

 Bullfinch. Captain Cock says : " I shot this bird in the Sonamerg 

 Valley (Cashmere) in June. They were then in pairs and evidently 

 just about to breed. I did not succeed in taking their nests owing 

 to my time being so limited, and the following year, when I wished 

 to enter Cashmere to continue my observations from the end of 

 June, where I had left off, to the end of August, I could not go 

 because I could not get a pass, there being none available. Had 

 I been a loafer or anything else than a British officer, no one 

 would have gainsayed my going." 



