TANTALUS. 221 



" From the size of the yoaug birds, I should fancy that the 

 eggs were laid from 12th September to loth October. 



" Septemher 22nd. — Revisiting the Grobhurdhuni pelicanry I was 

 sorry to find that we were rather too early. The trees on which 

 the nests have been placed all stand overloolting a pond, wliich at 

 this season is a good-sized piece of water. At least one hundred 

 pairs of birds must have been about the place, mostly, when we 

 arrived about sunset, standing on or beside their nests, but a few 

 still occupied in fishing or catching frogs in the pond beneath. 

 We sent a boy up who examined all the accessible nests, probably 

 some fifty, but in only three did we find eggs, and only one in each 

 of these." 



Some years later Mr. Henry Blewitt kindly visited the spot in 

 October, and procured a fine series of the eggs, which he sent me. 



Mr. Henry Blewitt says : — " The eggs that I send you were 

 taken on the 26th October from the nests that you yourself visited 

 one year when on tour. They are placed, as you will remember, 

 on the branches of large tamarind and semul trees which grow at 

 the edge of the Gobhurdhum Tank. The largest number of eggs 

 that I have found in any nest was four, and the smallest two. 



" In some nests there were two eggs and one fledgling ; in 

 others two eggs and two fledglings ; in some two, three, or four 

 eggs, and no young birds. The great majority of the eggs were a 

 good deal incubated, and there were manyj'oung birds in the nests, 

 and I should fancy that some eggs must have been laid as early 

 as the 1st October at any rate." 



Mr. E. H. Whitten has this year (1874) visited this spot, and 

 reporls as follows : — 



" On the west edge of the sacred tank at Gobhurdum, a town 

 in the Muttra District, thirteen miles from Muttra on the road 

 between that city and Ueeg, are some forty or fifty tamarind and 

 papree trees, chiefly tamarind, which are annually frequented as a 

 nesting-place by numbers of Pelican-Ibis. These birds make their 

 appearance there early in September, and soon after their arrival 

 pair off and commence breeding. Some eggs taken in the middle 

 of October were found to be partly incubated. The birds appear 

 to leave with their young brood towards April. The reason why 

 they frequent this place is probably that they are seldom molested 

 and never shot at, the tank being a sacred place, and that frogs 

 and small fish, with which they feed their young, arc easily pro- 

 curable in the tank. . 



" The place was visited twice this year, — once in the middle of 

 October, and a second time on the 5th of November. On the 

 first occasion many of the nests contained no eggs. Altogether, 

 on both occasions, more than one hundred eggs were taken from 

 the nests, 



" When the place was visited, there ^vere about two hundred 

 pairs of birds there. They breed in pairs, each pair having a 

 separate nest. The male bird assists the female to incubate the 

 eggs. The nests were some sixty or seventy feet from the grouud. 



