MOTACILLA. 



201 



I also have noticed the birds (or one of them) still building, and 

 yet found eggs more or less incubated within. 



The eggs are pure white, with scarcely any perceptible gloss ; 

 generally a long oval, occasionally somewhat pyriform in shape, 

 and rarely very long and narrow like those of our Indian Swift. 

 They are perfectly spotless, and so far as shape and size go the 

 egg of H. daurica figured by Bree sufficiently correctly represents 

 an average specimen. Many eggs, however, are longer and nar- 

 rower than that figure, and while all are, as in the figure, somewhat- 

 pointed towards the end, some are conspicuously so. 



The eggs vary from O75 to 0-83 inch in length, and from 0-52 

 to 0-6 f. ,h in breadth ; but they average about 0-78 by O55 inch. 



825. Hirundo hyperythra, Blyth. The Ceylon Swallow. 

 Hirundo hyperythra, Blyth, Hume, Cat. no. 85 quint. 



Colonel Legge writes in his ' Birds of Ceylon ' : " The Red- 

 bellied Swallow breeds in the north, south, and centre of the 

 island from March until June, constructing a Martin-like nest in 

 outhouses, open dwellings, or under culverts and bridges. The 

 nest is composed externally of mud, and lined with feathers ; it is 

 large and the entrance is situated usually at the end of a spout, 

 running from 3 to 6 inches along the planks at the top of the nest ; 

 some have merely a circular orifice at the top. One which I fre- 

 quently observed during the course of its construction was built in 

 a merchant's office at Galle, the familiar little architects taking no 

 notice whatever of the clerks who wrote at their desks just beneath ; 

 it was completed in about three weeks, the spout being added last, 

 and after this w r as finished one of the pair took up its position 

 inside the nest, and received the feathers brought by its mate to 

 the entrance. The eggs are either two or three in number, and 

 some brought to me as belonging to this bird were pure white and 

 pointed lengthy ovals in shape, much resembling those of Oypselus 

 ciffinis ; they measure O85 inch by O56 inch. I have not taken 

 the eggs myself." 



Family MOTACILLIDJE. 



Motacilla personata, Gould. The Masked Wagtail. 



Motacilla dukhunensis, Sykes, Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 218. 

 Motacilla personata, Gould, Hume, Cat. no. 591. 



Writing of M. personata in Afghanistan, Major Wardlaw Earn- 

 say says: "The Masked Wagtail (Motacilla alba of my first 

 paper, Ibis, 1879, p. 448) was abundant, and was breeding 



