150 FALCON! DyF. 



lights rather bluer, in some greener. Within a space of about 

 the size of a rupee or a florin, at the broad end, are numerous 

 excessively minute reddish-brown specks. A very few similar 

 specks are scattered about the rest of the egg, but they are so 

 small and so few and far between that these are not noticed until 

 the egg is closely looked into. It measures 2*9 inches by 1*97. 



Mr. J. E. Cripps, writing of the closely allied race which has 

 been named S. horsfieldi, says (he writes from Furreedpore in 

 Eastern Bengal) : " 23rd May, 1878. Near the factory is a small 

 market-place, in the centre of which a huge burgot-tree rears its 

 head. About 40 feet off the ground, and in the fork of one of the 

 primary branches, this bird's nest was placed. "When first I 

 noticed the parent bird, half her body was visible above the nest, 

 but when she became aware that I was noticing her, she crouched 

 down, and not even her head was visible. I pelted some half a 

 dozen stones, when she flew and settled on a branch close by, and 

 on my knocking her over she uttered a few shrill screams like 

 S. limnaetus. 1 sent a man up and found a callow young which 

 could not have been more than a week old. 



" By the 21st June feathers commenced sprouting on the wings, 

 scapulars and tail, all of a jet-black ; and a week later the feathers 

 of the tarsus appeared ; these were jet-black too. I weighed him 

 on the 10th June, when he scaled 1 Ib. 2^ oz. He used to eat the 

 flesh of every kind of bird except that of Hierococcyx, which he 

 would always throw up. "Why was this ? He would not do this 

 with Owl's and Hawk's flesh. On the morning of the 30th June I 

 found him dead. The lazy rascal of a servant, to save himself the 

 trouble of feeding it several times, had stuffed its maw so much 

 that the bird must have died of suffocation. I forgot to mention 

 that, in the nest under the chick, were four twigs with green 

 leaves of the jamoon-tree, which had evidently been broken the 

 very morning I found them. The young one was then covered 

 with down of a pale dove-grey." 



Cir cactus gallicus (Gmel.). Tlie Short-toed Eagle. 



Circaetus gallicus (Gm.}, Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 76 ; Hume, Rough Draft 

 N. fy E. no. 38. 



The Short-toed Eagle lays in the plains of Upper India in Jan- 

 uary, February, and March, and, according to Mr. E. Thompson, in 

 April and May in the Gurhwal forests. 



As a rule its nest is placed on trees, but on two occasions in 

 the Etawah District we have found this species breeding on small 

 platforms, in the face of the high clay cliffs of the Jumna. 



In different localities it varies in its choice of trees ; where trees 

 are plentiful, it will build on the topmost boughs of a very tall one, 

 while in bare country, like Htirriana or Western Eajpootana, you 

 will find the nest not halfway up some stunted neem-tree, or 

 scraggy thorny acacia, a mere apology for a tree. 



