164 JOUMNAL\ BOMBA Y NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. X. 



follows :- T^xii, horny ; gape, dull purple ; niouth, dark flesh colour ; 

 edges of eye-lids, dull flesh colour ; irides, vandyke-brown (Jerdon 

 says lightish brown]; legs varying from pink flesh-colour to dull reddish- 

 slate colour ; soles, paler fleshy-pink ; claws, almost white. 



The female has the edge of the maxilla and nearly the whole of the 

 mandible flesh-colour or horny flesh-colour, the tip being less pink than 

 the rest. 



Hume^s "Nests and Eggs " gives such an incomplete description of 

 the eggs of this very common species that I add a few notes about 

 those taken by myself. 



The ground-colour of the eggs is, as described, white, sometimes 

 faintly tinged with pink ; and the markings range from a pale rufous 

 or reddish to a deep purple or blackish-brown. 



In the majority of eggs these markings consist of spots and small 

 irregular blotches, whilst in others the blotches are larger and are 

 more or less intermingled with short broad streaks and straggling lines, 

 and other kinds of marks. 



In those eggs in which the markings are of the darker tints there 

 are generally some of dark brown as well, and also a few of very faint 

 grey. In some of my eggs the spots, blotches, etc., are almost entirely 

 absent, and in others they are very numerous over the whole surface. 

 Typically, the markings are rather numerous towards the bigger end, 

 and somewhat scanty elsewhere. 



One clutch is minutely speckled all over with pale rufous. Another 

 has only a few spots of pale lavender ; a third is densely covered with 

 short scriggly lines of very dark purple-brown mixed with spots and 

 specks of the same colour as well as subordinate ones of grey. 



Yet a fourth type is \h\(i\lj freckled with darker colours, and this type 

 is not at all uncommon. 



One hundred eggs average 1*14" X *90", and they vary in length 

 between -89" and 1-28" and in breadth between '79" and I'lO". 



I have taken three eggs, hard set, from a nest, and have also seen 

 seven in a nest more than once. 



(372) Pitta cyanea.— The Blue Pitta. 

 Hume, No. 344, Ter. ; Oates, JVo. 930. 

 Kot a common bird, and seems to be migratory. The young bird 

 has the whole upper plumage with the feathers tipped black, and the 



