365 JOURNAL, BOMBAt NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XV 11. 



Mr. J. Davidson, O.S., writevS : " I have three eggs of this bird in My 

 collection and have taken others ; of the three kept, two were taken in 

 the nest of Crateropus canorus on the 13th and 16th July, 1886, 

 respectively, at Kondebhari, Khandesh. The other was taken at Earwar, 

 Kanara, on the 12th April, 1889, in a nest of Crateropus griseus 

 (The White-headed Babbler)." 



The Common Hawk-Cuckoo seems almost, if not quite, invariably to 

 deposit its eggs in the nests of either Argya or Crateropus, the species 

 being apparently a matter of indifference. 



The only other nest, as far as is recorded, from which its egg has 

 been taken, was one found by Partridge, a European collector of mine, 

 who shot the bird as it left the nest. The nest and egg were brought in 

 to me, but the real owner was neither shot nor identified. It appeared 

 to be the nest of Niltava sundara (The Rufous-bellied Niltava), but it 

 was of course impossible to say for certain. 



Oates in Hume's Nest and Eggs describes the egg thus : " The eggs 

 are rather elongated, rather cylindrical ovals, very blunt at both ends. 

 The shell is fine and glossy. The color is a uniform rather dark 

 greenish-blue. They are larger, more elongated, and darker-colored 

 than those of C. jacobinits." Another egg is described in the same place 

 as a rather dark greenish-blue. 



The four eggs measured in Hume's Nest and Eggs varied between 

 •95" and 1*15" in length and between -75" and *82" in breadth. 



The eggs in my own collection are of three distinct grades of color : 

 the most pale of the three is not very much darker than some of my 

 eggs of Coccystes coromandus (The Red-winged Crested Cuckoo) and the 

 darkest is as dark as the darkest egg I have seen of C. jacobinus. I have 

 one egg taken by Mr. C. Inglis from the oviduct of a female shot in 

 Tirhoot (21st June, 1901), which is extremely bright in tint and rather 

 dark. This oviduct egg measures 1*2" by '79", whereas my largest 

 jacobinus' egg measures '98" by *87", so that though shorter, the latter has 

 greater cubic contents. My shortest varius, egg is *90" and the least 

 broad '70". All my eggs, and indeed all other eggs which I have seen, 

 have varied in shape between elliptical and spherical, the large majority 

 are almost true broad ellipses, but I have seen one or two so broad as 

 to be almost spherical. The satiny texture is the same as that of 

 Coccystes : the grain is very close and fine, and the shell extremely stout 

 n proportion to the size of the egg. 



