eggs of this species are broad ovals with a tolerably fine gloss.
The ground-colour is pure white. The whole of the larger end of the
egg is pretty thickly speckled and spotted with brown, varying from an
olive to a burnt sienna intermingled with little spots and clouds of
pale inky purple, and similar spots and specks chiefly of the former
colour, but smaller in size, scattered thinly over the rest of the
egg. In size they vary from 0.69 to 0.75 in length, and from 0.55 to
0.6 in breadth.

135. Dumetia hyperythra (Frankl.). _The Rufous-bellied Babbler_.

Dumetia hyperythra (_Frankl.), Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 26; _Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E._ no. 397.

The Rufous-bellied Babbler breeds throughout the Central Provinces,
Chota Nagpoor, Upper Bengal, the eastern portions of the North-West
Provinces, parts of Oudh, and even in the low valleys of Kumaon.

It lays from the middle of June to the middle of August, building
a globular nest of broad grass-blades or bamboo-leaves some 4 or 5
inches in diameter, sparingly lined with fine grass-roots or a little
hair, or sometimes entirely unlined. The nest is placed sometimes on
the ground amongst dead leaves, some of which are not unfrequently
incorporated in the structure; sometimes in coarse grass or some
little shrub a foot or two from the ground, but by preference,
according to my experience, in amongst the roots of a bamboo-clump.

Four is the usual number of eggs laid.

Mr. Brooks writes:--"On the 26th June, 1867, in the broken ground
above Chunar, I took two nests in the foot of a thick bamboo-bush
about 2 feet from the ground. The nests were made of bamboo-leaves
rolled into a ball with the entrance at the side, and no lining except
a few hairs. There were two eggs in one nest and three in the other.
They were all fresh. The eggs in the two nests varied somewhat: the
ground of the one was nearly pure white, and it was finely speckled
with reddish brown, which at the large end was partly confluent: the
other nest had the eggs with a pinkish-white ground, the spots larger
and less neatly defined, and with a rather large confluent spot at the
large end."

Writing from Hoshungabad, Mr. E.C. Nunn remarks:--"I found two nests
of this species, each containing two eggs, on the 20th July and 6th
August, 1868. Both nests were ball-shaped, of coarse grass very
firmly and compactly twisted together, and with numerous dead leaves
incorporated in the body of the nest and towards