LIOTHBIX. 14? 



fine, in some coarse, according to the nature of the moss growing 

 where the nest is placed, as the sole material, and lining the cavity 

 thickly with fine black moss and fern-roots. 



Dr. Jerdon tells us that at Darjeeling he has repeatedly had the 

 nest brought to him. " It is large, made of leaves of bamboos 

 carelessly and loosely put together, and generally placed in a clump 

 of bamboos. The eggs are three to five in number, of a somewhat 

 fleshy-white, with a few rusty spots." 



I cannot but think that in this case wrong nests had been brought 

 to Dr. Jerdon. The eggs that I possess are all of one type — rather 

 elongated ovals with scarcely any gloss, and strongly recalling in 

 shape, size, and appearance densely marked varieties of the eggs 

 of Hirundo rustiea, but with the markings rather browner and 

 slightly more smudgy. 



The eggs are typically rather elongated ovals, often slightly 

 compressed towards the small end, sometimes rather broader and 

 slightly pyriform. The shell is extremely fine and compact, but has 

 scarcely any gloss ; the ground-colour is sometimes pure white, 

 sometimes has a faint brownish-reddish or creamy tinge. The 

 markings are invariably most dense about the large end, where they 

 form a zone or cap, regular, well defined and confluent in some speci- 

 mens, irregular, ill-defined and blotchy in others. As a rule these 

 markings, which consist of specks, spots, and tiny blotches, are com- 

 paratively thinly scattered over the rest of the egg, but occasionally 

 they are pretty thickly scattered everywhere, though nowhere any- 

 thing like so densely as at the large end. The colour of the mark- 

 ings is rather variable. It is a brown of varying shades, varying 

 not only in different eggs, but there being often two shades on the 

 same egg. Normally it is I think an umber-brown, yellower in 

 some spots, but varying slightly in tinge, leaning to burnt umber, 

 sienna, and raw sienna. 



Other eggs subsequently obtained by Mr. Gammie are of much 

 the same character as those already described, but one is a good 

 deal shorter and broader, and the markings are more decided red 

 than are some of the yellowish-brown spots observable in the eggs 

 first obtained. 



In length the eggs seem to vary from - 76 to 08, and in breadth 

 from 0-54 to 0-58. 



Subfamily LTOTRICHIN^. 



235. Liothrix lutea (Scop.). The Bed-billed Liothrix. 



Leiothrix luteus (Scop.), Jerd. B, Ind. ii, p. 250. 



Leiothrix callipyga (Hodgs.), Hume, Rough Draft N. fy E. no. 614. 



The Eed-billed Liothrix breeds from April to August, at elevations 

 of from 3000 to 6000 feet, throughout the Himalayas south, as 

 a rule, of the first snowy range and eastward of the Sutlej ; west 



10* 



