PITTA. 285 



wanting in some eggs, and inky purple-black, or very nearly so in 

 many spots. 



The eggs vary from 1 to 1'0-i in length, and from 0-85 to O9 in 

 breadth *. 



Pitta brachyura (Linn.). The Indian Pitta. 



Pitta bengalensis (Gm.\ Jcrd. B. Ind. i, p. 503. 



Pitta coronate (Mull.), Hume, Rough Draft N. $ E. no. 345. 



My friend Mr. F. E. Blewitt has taken a vast number of the 

 eggs of the Indian Pitta in the neighbourhood of Eaipur, Central 

 Provinces. The nests, three of which he sent me with the eggs, 

 were huge globular structures, fully 9 inches in horizontal diameter 

 and 6 inches high, with a circular aperture on one side. They 

 were composed internally of fine twigs, notably those of the 

 tamarisk, and grass-roots ; externally, of dry leaves, many of them 

 skeleton leaves, held in their places by a few roots or twigs. The 

 internal cavity may have been about 4 inches in diameter. The 

 nests were placed in brushwood and scrub jungle, either on the 

 ground or on low branches close to the ground. The nests were 

 taken in July and August. They also breed, I know (though I 

 could never find the nests), in the Doon and the northern parts of 

 Eohilcund. Mr. E. Thompson remarks : " As this bird comes in 

 regularly about the first week in May, and remains in the Bhabur 

 till July or August, uttering its sweet call of two simple notes, I 

 am led to think it breeds with us. What becomes of the bird at 

 other seasons I do not know." 



Few Indian eggs are more beautiful than those of this species. 

 In shape they are excessively broad and regular ovals > some, 

 indeed, are almost spherical. They are excessively glossy, more so 

 than almost any other egg I know. The ground-colour is china- 

 white, sometimes faintly tinged with pink, sometimes creamy ; and 

 the eggs are speckled and spotted with, and in some eggs also 

 painted with fine hair-like lines of deep maroon, dark purple, and 

 sometimes brownish purple, as primary markings, and pale inky 

 purple as secondary ones. The primary markings are scattered, 

 in some instances pretty thickly, in others very sparingly, over the 



* PITTA MEGARHV.NCIIA, Schleg. The Lartjer Blue-winded Pitta. 

 Pitta ruegarhyncha, Schkg., Hume, Cat. no. 345 ter. 



Mr. J. Darling found the nest of this Pitta at Tapraw in the island of Toug- 

 kah, not far south of Tenasserim. This was on the 17th April. The nest was 

 of the usual type, and contained no eggs. The female to which the nest belonged, 

 however, proved on examination to have a fully-formed egg within her. 



This egg is too broken to permit of its being measured or its shape correctly 

 described, but it appears to have been a very broad short oval. The shell is 

 very fine, and though the egg was taken from the oviduct it is fairly glossy, so 

 that, laid in the natural way, it would have probably been highly glossy. The 

 ground is white, with a faint lilac tinge, and it is richly but not very thickly 

 streaked and marbled everywhere with dull maroon and pale inky purple. 



