209 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII. 
chucked in amongst the Liotrichine, because Oates was ata loss where 
else to put it. 
On the 17th May, 1890, I was fortunate enough to take a nest of this 
bird. I was out at the time after gaur and was going through thinly- 
scattered oak forest with an undergrowth of young sun grass. Whilst 
resting for a few minutes under a tree, I noticed a male of this species 
on a tree opposite carrying something in his mouth ; presently he flew 
to a tree about a dozen paces away, and promptly disappeared into a 
Jong crevice which ran down one of the main boughs. Sending a man 
up to investigate, both male and female flew away, and to my delight 
the man announced that there was a nest with seven eggs. 
Both nest and eggs were brought down for my examination. The 
former was a thick pad of very fine scraps of moss, compressed down 
until it formed an almost solid mass, in depth about 4” and about the 
same in diameter at the top, whence it gradually narrowed to a point 
in shape the same as the hollow in which it was placed. The depression 
in which the eggs were laid was about 3” in diameter by hardly #" deep, 
and this was almost filled with soft cotton down. 
The eggs are exactly like those of Maclolophus spilonotus, differing 
only in size. The ground-colour is a chalky-white, and the whole sur- 
face is thickly scattered with brownish-red spots of a bold character, 
others underlying of a pinkish-grey and light neutral tint. The mark- 
ings are more numerous towards the larger end, but do not form a cap 
orring. Ihave eggs of Sitta frontalis very closely resembling these 
eggs, but of course much smaller. Of the seven eggs, I only managed 
to blow five as they were very hard set. From two eggs the young 
were already emerging, and these I broke im trying to clean. Three 
others were cleaned with a good deal of trouble, and two, which were 
much less hard set than the others, were blown fairly easily. In shape 
they are a broad regular oval, very little compressed towards the 
smaller end. In size the five eggs average °76" > °6". 
Another clutch of eggs was brought to me, which were said to belong 
to this bird and were exactly like those already described, but were 
much larger, measuring about °83" % ‘65". They were, however, so 
damaged in addition to being hard set that it was impossible to pre- 
serve them and difficult even to measure very correctly. 
