t is 1.5 inch deep; it
is made of paper-like bits of lichen welded together with spiders'
webs, and with a lining of elastic fibres. It is the shape of a deep
soap-stand, open at the top of course. It contained two eggs of a
bluish or greenish-white ground, much spotted with liver colour,
especially near the large end, where the spots are clustered into a
zone."

Dr. Scully, writing also from Nepal, says:--"During the
breeding-season (May and June) this Minivet is found in forests on
the hills up to an elevation of 7500 feet. A nest was found in the
Sheopoori forest on the 17th June, which contained two very young
birds and one egg."

The eggs of this species that I have seen are moderately broad ovals,
as a rule, very regular in their shape, and scarcely compressed at all
towards the lesser end. The shell is fine and satiny, but the eggs
have little or no real gloss. The ground-colour is a dull white,
sometimes slightly tinged with pink, sometimes with green, and they
are richly and profusely blotched, spotted, and streaked, most
densely, as a rule, towards the large end, with brownish red and
pale purple. Most eggs exhibit a more or less conspicuous, though
irregular, zone round the larger end.

The eggs vary in length from 0.71 to 0.8 inch, and in breadth from
0.54 to 0.6 inch.

499. Pericrocotus roseus (Vieill.). _The Rosy Minivet_.

Pericrocotus roseus (_Vieill._), _Jerd. B. Ind._ i, p. 422; _Hume,
Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 275.

The only one of my contributors who appears to have taken the eggs
of the Rosy Minivet is Colonel C.H.T. Marshall. Mr. R. Thompson
says:--"They breed in the warmer valleys of Kumaon, up to an elevation
of some 5000 feet, in May and June;" but he adds: "have never got down
the nests."

Colonel Marshall, writing from Murree, says:--"The Rosy Minivet builds
a beautifully little shallow cup-shaped nest, the outer edge being
quite narrow and pointed. The external covering of the nest is fine
pieces of lichen fastened on with cobwebs. It was found on the 12th of
June, and contained three fresh eggs, white, with greyish-brown spots
and blotches sparsely scattered about the larger end; the length is
0.8 by 0.55 inch; 5000 feet up."

The nest, which I owe to this gentleman, is externally a short section
of a cylinder, rather than a cup, the walls standing up outside almost
perpendicularly. It is 2.5 inches in diameter and nearly 1.75 in
height. The rim of the nest is 1/4 inch wide, and