THE OOLOGY OF INDIAN PARASITIC CUCKOOS. 683 



of the foster-parent. This egg was sent me marked by mistake as C. 

 maculatus, and as such I recorded it in our Journal (IX, p. 368). Mr. 

 Hole, however, wrote to me and said that the only birds haunting the 

 nullah in which he took the nest were several xanthorhynclius and that the 

 egg he believed to belong to that bird and not maculatus. Both 

 the Violet Cuckoo and the Emerald Cuckoo were very common in 

 Jellalpur, Cachar, where this was taken, but at the time it was taken no 

 Emerald Cuckoos were about. 



This egg is a most lovely cream-pink in ground colour, and is marked 

 with irregular blotches, spots and a few short broad lines of deep red- 

 brown, many of the dark spots being surrounded with a paler tint of the 

 same colour ; there are also numerous underlying spots of pale lavender 

 and lilac. About the broad end the markings of all kinds are numerous, 

 about the smaller end they are scanty. The surface is very smooth and 

 glossy, but has not the silky surface of eggs of Coccystes, Bierococcytp 

 varius or Cuculus poliocephalus. The shell is neither noticeably stout 

 nor fragile, the grain is very fine and close. 



A second egg taken from the nest of Turdinulus roberti (Robert's 

 Babbler), which also had two eggs in it of the owner, is much like the 

 above, but wants the deepest coloured markings and has practically no 

 lines. The freckles, specks and blotches are numerous all over the egg,. 

 but mostly at the larger end. This egg was taken on 6th June 

 1903. 



These eggs are very much like in detail the eggs of Penthoceryw, but 

 whereas the eggs of the Banded Bay Cuckoo strikes one always as being 

 very brown eggs, the first thing that strikes one about the eggs of the 

 Violet Cuckoo and Emerald Cuckoo is the brilliant pink of their general 

 tone. 



My eggs measure -76" by '58", SO" by '5.9" and -78" by -59". Two 

 are blunt ovals, but slightly compressed towards the smaller end ; the 

 third is narrower and more pointed. 



During the season 1905, I was fortunate in obtaining several speci- 

 mens of this Cuckoo's eggs, in every case in the nest of Alcippe 



nepalensis (The Nepal Babbler). Dr. Coltart obtained three specimens 



one in one nest and two in a second . All three of these agree fairly 

 well with those I have described above, but the latter two are far less 

 dominantly pink, and the markings are more profuse and more speckly 

 in their character than in any of the three shewn in Plate III. 

 17 



