SPILOENIS. 157 



blotched, clouded, and dashed with pale purple and rusty red, the 

 purple forming a dull cap of irregular shape over nearly half the 

 egg at the larger end. The nest, which was placed some 70 feet 

 up a kanyin tree {Dipterocarpws alatus), was composed of large 

 branches, laid across in a fork, with a superstructure of small sticks 

 intertu ined in a circular form, and the hollow in which the egg 

 reposed lined with very fine twigs ; the whole mass may have been 

 some three and a half feet in diameter and one and a half foot thick." 



Mr. J. E. Cripps found the nest of this bird at Furreedpore in 

 Eastern Bengal. He says : — " The bird shot on the 1st April was 

 incubating. The nest was on a bael {^gle marmelos) tree, and 

 within 4 feet of the outer end of one of the primary branches 

 which grew out perfectly horizontally, and about 15 feet ofi the 

 ground. She flew off the nest and settled on a bombax tree close 

 by, when I knoclted her over ; nest of twigs of sizes with a lining 

 of fresh bael-leaves ; one very hard-set egg. Found a frog in the 

 gullet of this bird. Their principal food, however, is snakes. One 

 day I watched a bird finishing a snake, two feet long, in five minutes. 

 They commence at the head and go on tearing and swnllowing until 

 all is done. They are very fearless birds, allowing me to pass 

 within twenty feet of them when sitting on the ground with snakes 

 in their claws. On one occasion, when out Snipe-shooting, one of 

 these birds stooped at a wounded Snipe but missed it. They are 

 permanent residents. Their cry has a mournful sound, and, 

 although not very loud, can be heard when the bird is flying high 

 overhead." 



The egg taken by Major Bingham is a very regular and broad 

 oval, with a rather smooth shell and a white ground with an immense 

 confluent cap of dingy rufous brown, extended as a shower of 

 blotches, smears, and clouds over the whole of the rest of the egg. 

 Here and there the markings have a dull purplish tinge. I have 

 seen Neophron eggs not very different in appearance from this one. " 

 The egg taken by Mr. Cripps is a regular moderately broad oval, 

 just appreciably pointed towards one end ; the shell is dull, coarse, 

 and full of pores and entirely glossless. The ground is greyish 

 white, and it is pretty thickly sprinkled over the upper half of the 

 egg, and more thickly elsewhere, with small irregular patches and 

 blotches of a dull pale yellowish brown. Doubtless very much 

 brighter coloured examples occur. It measures 2-51 by 2. 



Spilornis spilogaster (Blyth). The Ceylon Serpent-Eagle. 

 Spilornis spilogaster {BL), Hume, Cat. no. 39 bis A. 



Of this somewhat doubtful species. Colonel Legge writes in his 

 ' Birds of Ceylon ' : — " The nest of this Eagle has very seldom been 

 found ; and the eggs I have never been able to procure. It breeds 

 in the Western Province in March and April, Mr. Mac Vicar, of the 

 Ceylon Public Works Department, having received a young bird 

 taken from a nest in the Hewagam Korale in the latter month. 



