OEATEEOPUS. 77 



" June 17, 1876. A nest containing 4 young birds. 



" Oct. 15, 1876. „ „ 4 fresh eggs. 



" Nov. 3, 1876. „ „ 4 slightly incubated. 



" In some nests I have noticed a breach upon one side of the 

 nest as if intended for the convenience of the bird's tail. It is 

 not unusual to find an egg of 0. jacobinus in the nest." 



Major C. T. Bingham writes : — " Common both at Allahabad 

 and at Delhi ; I have found this bird breeding from April to the end 

 of July. All nests that I have found have, with the exception of 

 one, been placed in low babool bushes ; once only I found a nest 

 near Delhi in the fork of a low bough of a mango-tree, this was 

 on the 31st July. The nests are more or less loosely constructed 

 cups of slender twigs and grass-roots and inclined." 



Mr. J. R. Cripps writing from Eastern Bengal says : — " On the 

 15th April I found a nest on the very top of a mango-tree about 

 30 feet off the ground, shooting the male as it flew off the nest." 



The eggs of this species are very variable in colour, shape, and 

 size. Typically they are rather broad ovals, somewhat compressed 

 towards one end, and much the shape of, though a good deal 

 smaller than, those of our English Song-Thrush. Some are, how- 

 ever, long and cylindrical; others more or less spherical. The 

 colour varies from a pale blue, like that of Trochalopterum lineatum, 

 to a deep dull blue, recalling, but yet not so dark as, that of 

 Qarrulax albigularis. The eggs are typically glossy, but it is re- 

 markable that in a large series the deepest coloured are always far 

 the most glossy. Some deep blue eggs of this species are most 

 intensely glossy, more so than almost any other of our Indian 

 eggs, except those of Metopidius indicus. I need scarcely say that 

 the eggs are entirely spotless and devoid of all markings, but I may 

 note that each egg is invariably the same colour throughout, and 

 that I have never met with a specimen in which the shade of colour 

 varied in the same egg. 



In length the eggs vary from - 88 to 1 - 15, and in breadth from 

 0-75 to 082 ; but the average of fifty-one eggs measured is 1-01 

 by 0-78. 



C. malabaricus. 



The Jungle Babbler, like the White-headed one, breeds pretty 

 well over the whole of Southern India, but while the latter is 

 chiefly confined to the more open plain country, the former is the 

 bird of the uplands, hills, and forests. Still the Jungle Babbler 

 is found at times in the same localities as the White-headed one, 

 and what is more, specimens occur, as in Cochin, which partake 

 of the distinctive characters of both. A great deal still remains to 

 be done in working out properly this group ; both in Sindh on the 

 west and the Tributary Mehals on the east, and again in some 

 parts of the Nilghiris, races occur quite intermediate between 

 typical 0. terricolor and typical C. malabaricus, while in the south, 

 as already mentioned, forms intermediate between this latter and 

 C. griseus seem common. Three distinguishable races again of 



