202 
ORNITHOLOGY. 
0*75 to 0*87 in breadth, and that the average of fifty eggs 
measured- was I'll by O'l. [A. 0. H.] 
475. Copsychus saularis (Linn.). 
This species was only observed in the low hills through 
which the road to Kashmir from the Panjab first passes on 
leaving the plains. It never seems to ascend the hills to 
any great height. [G. H.^ 
Very discrepant accounts have been given of the nidifica. 
tion and eggs of this species, but I do not doubt that 
Captain Hutton was quite right, and that his '^^carneous cream- 
coloured^^ eggs verily belonged to this species. It is well 
known that eggs of Passerine birds, normally blue or bluish 
green, occasionally assume this pinky shade. I have several 
such of Drymoipus inornatus. Writing to me recently. 
Captain Hutton says : — 
" Copsychus saularis arrives in the hills up to about 5500 
feet in the beginning of April, returning to the Dehra Doon 
early in the autumn. In the Doon it breeds in May and 
June, constructing a shallow nest of fine woody flower-stalks 
intermixed with fine roots and the dry tendrils of climbing 
plants, with a little moss externally, a-nd placed within a 
hole in some large tree, or in a bank or wall, where it lays 
five eggs of a pale bluish green, thickly spotted and blotched 
with purplish brown, and showing an imperfect ring of 
nearly confluent blotches at the larger end. There is, how- 
ever, great variety both in the number and size of spots and 
in intensity of colouring; some being blotched as well as 
spotted, others being simply and uniformly freckled with 
rufous brown without any indication of a ring at the larger 
end, and in these the size is somewhat less. Having ob- 
tained five or six of these typical nests and shot the old 
birds for examination, there can be no doubt about the 
correctness of the foregoing remarks ; yet at the same time 
I am still fully convinced that the nest and white eggs 
formerly noticed {J. A. S. B.) as having been taken from a 
hole in a bank was a mere accidental variety, for the nests 
are the same as to materials and situation, while the circum- 
stance of the pinky-white eggs appears to me to be the 
