STEOETTCS. 277 



" The eggs are oval in shape, white, with a pinkish tinge when 

 fresh, very minutely spotted and speckled with light red, most 

 densely at the larger end. The average of twelve eggs is 062 

 by 0-43." 



The eggs are moderately broad and regular ovals, usually some- 

 what compressed towards one end, but occasionally exhibiting no 

 trace of this. The shell is very fine and delicate, but, as a rule, 

 entirely devoid of gloss. The ground-colour varies from pure to 

 pinky white. The markings are always minute, but in some they 

 are comparatively much bolder and larger than in others, and they 

 vary in colour from reddish pink to a comparatively bright red. 

 In many eggs the markings are much more dense towards the 

 large end, where they form, or exhibit a strong tendency to form, 

 an irregular, more or less confluent zone ; and wherever the 

 markings are dense there a certain number of tiny pale purple 

 or lilac spots or clouds will be found intermingled with and under- 

 lying the red markings. Some eggs show none of these spots 

 and exhibit no tendency to form a zone, being pretty uniformly 

 speckled and spotted all over. Some are not very unlike eggs of 

 the Grasshopper and Dartford Warblers ; others, again, are almost 

 counterparts of the eggs of Franklinia buchanani. 



In length the eggs vary from 0-6 to 0-68, and in breadth from 

 0-46 to 0-51. 



446. Neornis flavolivaceus, Hodgs.* The Aberrant Warbler. 

 Neornis flavolivacea, Hodgs., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 188. 



Mr. W. Theobald makes the following remarks on the breeding 

 of this bird at Darjeeling : — " Lays in the second week in July. 

 Eggs three in number, blunt, ovato-pyriform. Size 069 by 0"55. 

 Colour deep dull claret-red, with a darker band at broad end. 

 Nest, a deep cup, outside of bamboo-leaves, inside fine vegetable 

 fibres, lined with feathers." 



From Sikhim Mr. Gammie writes : — " I have found this Tree- 

 Warbler (though why it should be called a Tree- Warbler I cannot 

 imagine, for it sticks closely to grass and low scrub, and never by 

 any chance perches on a tree) breeding from May to July at 

 elevations from 3500 up to 6000 feet. All the nests I have seen 

 were of a globular shape with entrance near the top. Both in 

 shape and position the nest much resembles that of Suya atrigu- 

 laris, and is, I have no doubt, the one brought to Jerdon as be- 

 longing to that bird. It is placed in grassy bushes, in open country, 

 within a foot or so of the ground, and is made of bamboo-leaves 

 and, for the size of the bird, coarse grass-stems, with an inner layer 

 of fine grass-panicles, from which the seeds have dropped, and 



* I have transferred Hodgson's notes under this title in the ' Bough Draft ' 

 to Horornis fortipes, to which bird Hodgson's account of the nidiflcation un- 

 doubtedly relates, his type-birds No. 900 being Neornis assimilis. — En. 



