214 VTJLTUEID^. 



(usually a babooT) soou becomes loaded with rags and tatters. These 

 are a perfect godsend to the Neophrons of the neighbourhood, 

 whom 1 have more than once watched robbing these rural '• shrines" 

 of their trophies by the score. Sometimes the rags of various 

 colours are laid out neatly in the nest, as if an attempt had been 

 made to please the eye ; sometimes they are irregularly jumbled up 

 with the materials of the nest. Cotton wool, old and dirty, stolen, 

 J suspect, from the old ' rizais' or padded coverlids thrown with half- 

 burnt dead bodies into the river, occurs occasionally in great lumps 

 in the nest ; and I have several times found nests lined entirely 

 with masses of human hair, which, in a country where near relatives 

 shave their heads as a part of the funeral ceremonies, oflen lies thick 

 in the environs of villages and towns. Sometimes the birds line 

 their nests with green leaves, much as many Eagles do. In size, 

 the nests vary from 2 to 3 feet in diameter, and from 4 to 10 inches 

 in depth. 



Mr. W. Theobald makes the following note of this bird's breeding 

 in the neighbourhood of Pind Dadan Ehan and Katas in the Salt 

 Range : — " Lay in the third week of March ; eggs, two only ; shape, 

 Icng oval ; size, 2-53 to 2-75 inches in length and from 1-85 to 1'90 

 ii'.ch in breadth ; colour, pale brownish red, thickly blotched with 

 dark brownish red : nest, a few twigs placed in holes of cliffs and 

 difficult to approach." 



Mr. W. Blewitt records taking some twenty nests of this 

 species in the neighbourhood of Hansie between the 20th of 

 March and the end of April 1868. The nests were all on trees, — 

 peepul, sheeshum, burgot, neem, and keekur. None were more 

 than 21 feet from the ground, and one \\as at a height of only 12 

 feet. They varied from 12 to 18 inches in diameter, and from 

 3 to 7 inches in thickness ; some were slightly, some densely, put 

 together, and were composed in almost every instance of small 

 hranches and twigs of the ber and keekur, both thorny trees. One 

 nest had no hning, the others were more or less hned with straw, 

 feathers, leaves, and rags, one or all ; while in many instances rags 

 were plentifully mcorporated in the body of the structure. Two 

 was the number of eggs in each nest ; some of those taken at the 

 end of April were still quite fresh. 



In Northern India also this species is not confined to the plain : 

 I have seen the birds fully 8500 feet high in the Himalayas, and 

 have taken their nests below Simla at an ele-\ ation of fully 6000 

 feet. Mr. E. 1 hompson says : — " The Neophrons are to be found 

 breeding in numbers along the precipices which crown the river 

 Kossilla, from Khyrna upwards. On the sandstone precipices of 

 the Sewaliks, and those of the Kumaon and Gurhwal outer ranges, 

 numberless nests may be found. One pair breeds yearly on a 

 precipice south-east of Nynee Tal." 



Writing from Murree, Colonel C. H. T. Marshall tells us that he 

 " found a nest in a cliff in May, with two fresh eggs, at an elevation 

 of about 4000 feet." 



Normally they lay two eggs ; but I have repeatedly found birds 



