264 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 1892. 



but tlie centre pair tipped with fulvous-white, purest on the outer 

 feathers. 



Length 7'8 in. ; wing 3*5 in.; tail 3'5 in. ; tarsus '78 in. ; bill at 

 front *6 in. ; and from gape '85 in. 



The typical bird of North Cachar does not have the ear-coverts as 

 dark a crimson as those of Manipur and further East; but many birds 

 are met with these plumes of quite as dark a colour as any Burmese 

 birds. Agaiuj I find here that most birds have all but the centre 

 tail feathers tipped with whitish, those with only four pairs so tipped 

 being only about one to six of the others. 



NiDiPiCATiON. — It is quite impossible for me to add anything of 

 importance to the accounts already given of the nesting of this 

 well-known bird, and I therefore merely note a few details about 

 some abnormal clutches of eggs. 



The most remarkable egg I have is one with a pale purpKsh-white 

 ground and densely freckled with rather pale neutral tint, these 

 frecklings forming a very distinct ring round the larger end. I 

 have an egg of Molimde& hurmanicus, which is quite undistinguish- 

 able from this one and might have been laid in the same clutch. 



Another queer clutch has the ground-colour, which is a pale salmon, 

 almost entirety concealed by bold blotches of deep reddish-brown, 

 and another is marked just the same with pinkish -brown. 



A fourth clutch resembles very closely the eggs of the genus 

 Serilophus, the egg itself being white and the markings consist of 

 tiny specks of inky black and lavender, sparsely scattered over 

 the larger end and almost absent elsewhere. 



A very common type of egg here is one with a pale salmon or 

 pink ground rather boldly marked with blotches and spots of different 

 shades of red. 



I once got this bird's nest in a most unusual place, the very centre 

 of a field of grass, not in a bush or even in a clump of grass but 

 right on the ground among the roots of some grass rather coarser 

 than that surrounding it. These birds often build in my garden, and 

 I notice that long after the young are fully fledged,they return every 

 night to roost in the nest. They breed up to 4,000 ft., and are 

 sometimes found on the highest peaks, but thej are most common 

 below 2,500. In the cold weather they assemble in immense' flocks 



