280 PITTID^. 



something moving, which I first took to be a rat, but presently 

 made out to be a Pitta o some kind scratching among the leaves. 

 Breathlessly waiting with gun at full cock, I watched the bird for 

 full ten minutes. At last it came well in sight, and I recognized it 

 as a male of the above species. I hastily raised my gun and fired, 

 knocking the bird over, and to my astonishment flushed a second, 

 which, by the hasty glance I got of it, I thought was a female, 

 wanting the black about the head. As I picked up the dead bird it 

 flashed on me that these were a pair, and that there might be a 

 nest, and sure enough a little search showed me a compact little 

 oven-shaped nest, made on the ground at the foot of a tree, of 

 leaves, roots, and grass, and containing four eggs. The entrance 

 to the nest was at the side looking down the steep slope on which 

 it was built, and having a firm little platform of twigs leading up 

 to it. The interior of the nest was lined with fine black roots. 

 The eggs are glossy white, spotted chiefly at the larger end with 

 purplish black. They measure 1-10 x O88, 1-08 x 0-85, 1-09 x 0-85, 

 and 1-10x0-86. I may add that I did not take eggs, or dis- 

 turb the nest there and then, but waited till the following morning, 

 hoping to secure the female ; I was disappointed, however, the 

 eggs were quite cold, and the nest had evidently been deserted. 

 Work obliged me to shift camp that day. I tried to remove the 

 nest, but, notwithstanding the utmost care, it tumbled to pieces." 

 The eggs of this species, to my mind, fully establish what 1 have 

 always contended, namely, that it is one of the PittidaB. No one 

 seeing the eggs of Pitta nepalensis, P. brachyura, P. cyanoptera, 

 P. cyanea, P. cucullata, and P. megarhyncha, could then, on seeing 

 the eggs of this species, doubt that they all belong to the same 

 subgroup. The general character of the egg is the same glossy 

 china-white ground, speckled and spotted with a more or less inky 

 purple, becoming blackish in spots. But nevertheless the eggs 

 have a character of their own, and, though much smaller, most 

 closely resemble those of P. nepalensis. In shape they are broad 

 ovals, but they are rather more pointed towards the small end than 

 are those of any of the species above referred to, and the markings 

 are more speckly and spotty, scarcely showing any of the peculiar 

 angular hieroglyphic-like lines and scratches so common in the eggs 

 of P. cucullata, P. cyanoptera, and P. cyanea. 



In this respect they more resemble P. bracliyura and P. nepalen- 

 sis, but the markings, the spots I mean, run decidedly smaller than 

 in the eggs of those two species, and are almost all of the dark colour 

 well marked, and very few of them of the pale washed-out lilac- 

 grey. They are decidedly blacker too, and show scarcely any of the 

 reddish-purple tinge that characterizes so many of the spots of 

 those species. 



