IRENA. 157 



extremity of Ceylon), in which district we understand it to have 

 been procured. A large groove along the underside of the nest 

 indicates it to have been placed upon a branch ; the general form 

 is somewhat flat, and it is composed of very soft materials, chiefly 

 dry grass and silky vegetable fibres, rather compactly interwoven 

 with some pieces of dead leaf and bark on the outside, over which 

 a good deal of spider's web has been worked. It contains four 

 eggs, white, abruptly speckled over with dark bistre mingled with 

 some ashy spots." Layard is not generally reliable where eggs are 

 concerned, for he did not usually take them with his own hands 

 and natives will lie ; and I doubt the four eggs here, but I think, 

 so far as the nest goes, that he was right in this case. 



The eggs are rather elongated ovals ; some of them a good deal 

 pointed towards one end, others again slightly pyriform. The 

 shell is very delicate ; the ground-colour white to creamy white ; 

 as a rule almost glossless, in some specimens slightly glossy. 

 They are sparingly marked, usually chiefly at the large end, with 

 spots, specks, small blotches, hair-lines, or hieroglyphic-like figures, 

 which are typically almost black, but which in some eggs are 

 blackish, or even reddish, or purplish brown. In no specimens 

 that I have seen were the markings at all numerous, except just at 

 the large end ; and in some they consist solely of a few tiny specks, 

 scattered about the crown of the egg. 



The eggs vary from 08 to 0-92 in length, and from 0-56 to 0-63 

 in breadth ; but the average of a dozen was 0-86 by - 6. 



254. Irena puella (Lath.). The Fairy Blue-bird. 



Irena puella (Lath.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 105 ; Hume, Rough Draft N. fy 

 E. no 469. 



Mr. Frank Bourdillon favoured me with an egg of the Fairy 

 Blue-bird, which with other rare eggs he obtained on the Assamboo 

 Hills. So little is known of this range that I quote his remarks 

 upon this locality. 



" I must premise that the specimens were obtained along the 

 Assamboo Bange of hills, between the elevations of 1500 and 

 3000 feet above sea-level. This range of hills, running in a 

 north-westerly and south-easterly direction from Cape Comorin to 

 8° 33' north latitude, forms the boundary line between Travancore 

 and the British Territory of Tinnevelly, the average height of 

 the range being about 4000 feet, while some of the peaks are as 

 high as 5500 feet. The general character of the hills is dense 

 forest, broken here and there by grass ridges and crowned by pre- 

 cipitous rocks, above which lies an almost unexplored table-land, 

 varying in width from a mile to 12 or 15 miles, at an elevation of 

 almost 4000 feet." 



" The egg of the Fairy Blue-bird," he adds, " was taken slightly 

 set on the 28th February, 1873, from a loose sparsely-built nest 

 situated in a sapling about 12 feet from the ground. The nest was 



