242 ALATJDIDJE. 



say : " Very numerous. Seen with Mirafra erytJi ropier a also 

 perching on telegraph-wires. Breeds plentifully throughout the 

 Poona and Sholapoor Districts in April and beginning of May. 

 Their nests, as a rule, are built in a hole in a bank, either of a 

 river or a nullah, but sometimes in an ordinary bund. Nest well 

 lined with hair and wool and warmly made like a llobin's. All 

 the nests taken by Davidson during last season contained but two 

 eggs each, but a nest containing four young Larks, which he 

 believed to be of this kind, was brought to him in May." 



The eggs have but little gloss, and in shape are moderately 

 elongated ovals slightly pointed towards the smaller end. The 

 ground-colour is creamy or pale yellowish white, pretty thickly 

 freckled and speckled all over, but most densely at the large end, 

 with yellowish or at times somewhat reddish brown, with which 

 freckling very pale inky-purple blotches or spots (only faintly 

 visible) are here and there intermingled. 



The eggs vary from 0*77 to 0*95 in length, and from 0*56 to 

 0-65 in breadth j but the average of twenty-six eggs is O85 

 bv 0-62. 



Ammomanes phoenicuroid.es (Blyth). The Desert 

 Finch-Lark. 



Ammomanes lusitanica (Gut.), Jerd. 1L Ind. \\, p. 422; Hume.Rou<ih 

 Draft N. $ E. no. 759. 



The Desert Finch-Lark breeds throughout the rocky barren hills 

 of Sindh and Western and North-western Punjab. It lays in 

 April, May, and June, but 1 have never myself found the nest or 

 seen it in situ. 



Captain Cock wrote : " This Lark breeds in the low hills of the 

 Peshawur Valley. Its nests are abundant in the hills near Now- 

 shera. May and June are the nesting months. The nest is placed 

 under a shelf of rock or flat stones upon the ground, and is con- 

 structed of grass-stalks lined with fine roots, and the bird piles up 

 little flat pieces of stone all round the nest, just as I have observed 

 P. (jrisea do in that neighbourhood. The eggs resemble those of 

 P. yrisea, only they are much larger. Three seems to be the usual 

 number, but I think I once took four eggs out of one nest." 



The eggs are very regular ovals, some rather broader, some slightly 

 more elongated, and more or less compressed towards the small 

 end. The eggs have a very faint gloss, and the shell is particularly 

 fine and smooth. The ground-colour is white, not absolutely pure, 

 but with a scarcely perceptible brownish, greyish, or greenish tint, 

 varying in different eggs. The eggs are only moderately thickly 

 sprinkled over with specks and small spots of pale yellowish brown; 

 these markings are always most numerous towards the larger 

 end, where they form, or exhibit a tendency to form, an irregular, 

 partially confluent cap or zone, as the case may be ; and where 



