120 BUBONID^E. 



This beautifully plumaged species is only found in well-wooded districts at 

 no great elevation. Its hoot is loud, harsh and resonant. Of its nidification 

 little is known. The normal number of eggs is two, deposited, like as in 

 the previous species, in large depressions or in the fork of trees, generally 

 peepul or mango at about from 10 to 20 feet from the ground. There is no 

 nest, so to speak, but a little dry touchwood, and a few dead leaves. The eggs 

 are round, oval, white, and in some instances with a delicate creamy tinge. 

 In length they vary from 1-94 to 2-1 inches and in breadth from 1-63 to 175. 

 The months in which the young are hatched are generally April and May, 

 sometimes at the end of March. Lieut. Barnes, however, says he took full 

 fledged nestlings from a large hole in a tree at Saugor, Central Provinces, as 

 early as the 22nd February. 



116. Syrnium newarense, Hodgs. Asia/. Res. xix. p. 168; Hume, 



Rough Notes, ii. p. 348 ; id. Nests and Eggs, Ind. B. p. 60 ; Jerd. B. Ind. i. 

 p. 122, No. 64. THE NEPAUL BROWN WOOD-OWL. 



Upper parts rich brown, quill and tail feathers barred whity brown, under 

 surface pale rusty, with numerous narrow brown bands ; inner scapulars the 

 same ; throat white ; rump and upper-tail coverts also faintly barred ; forehead, 

 crown and occiput deep blackish brown ; the stiff bristle-like feathers in front 

 and above the angle of the eyes dark-shafted ; legs and feet densely feathered 

 to the last joint of the toes ; bill greenish horny, bluish towards base ; cere (?) 

 plumbeous. 



Length. -21-5 to 24 inches (28 ? Sharpe); wing 15-2 to 15*5 ; tail 9-75 

 to 1075 ; tarsus 275 to 3. 



Hab. N.-W. Provinces, the Himalayas, and Nepaul. Recorded from 

 Simla, Koteghur, B. Burmah (?), Bussahir, Kumaon, and the Neilgherries (?) 



This species, Mr. Hume says, so far as he knows, lays in May. He saySj 

 "contrary to what might have been expected, the nest was placed on a shelf pro- 

 jecting from the face of a low precipice ; immediately above it projected a 

 large point of rock from which depended a perfect curtain of bushes which 

 reached the tops of the trees growing at the foot of the precipice. The nest, 

 according to the Paharees, with Mr. Hume, was composed of sticks with a few 

 feathers intermingled. The nest contained (6th June), three very young birds. 

 Mr. Hume like other Ornithologists, who have of late years worked at the subject, 

 doubts the distinctness of this species from S. indranee. The following re- 

 marks are his, and the quotations too from his invaluable Scrap-book, which 

 gives some very material information in regard to measurements of such of the 

 specimens of this species in his possession, from which it will be seen that the 

 dimensions very little exceed those given by Dr. Jerdon for Indranee, and fall 

 short of those which he gives for Newarensis. A Burmese skin differed in none 

 of its dimensions by more than a mere fraction from the skin of an old and a 

 young male j he adds that notwithstanding Mr. Blyth's opinion." I nevertheless 



