ut devoid of gloss. The
egg measures 0.08 by 0.55 inch.

Three other eggs from the Sikhim Terai measure 0.68 by 0.51.

Family DICRURIDAE.

327. Dicrurus ater (Hermann). _The Black Drongo_.

Dicrurus macrocercus (_V._), _Jerd. B. Ind._ i, p. 427.
Buchanga albirictus, _Hodgs., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 278.

The Black Drongo or Common King-Crow lays throughout India, at any
rate in the plain country; it does not appear to breed either in the
Himalayas or the Nilghiris at any height exceeding 5000 feet.

A few eggs may be found towards the close of April, and again during
the first week of August, but May, June, and July are _the_ months.

It builds usually pretty high up in tall trees, in some fork not quite
at the outside, constructing a broad shallow cup, and lays normally
four eggs, although I _have_ found five. Elsewhere I have recorded the
following in regard to its nidification:--

"Close at our own gate is a pretty neem tree, the '_Melia
azadirachta_,' a species now naturalized in Provence and other parts
of the south of France. High up in a fork a small nest was visible,
and projecting over it on one side a black forked tail that could
belong to nothing but the King-Crow. Of this bird we have already
taken during the last six weeks at least fifty nests, and in many
cases where we had left the empty nest in _statu quo_, we found it a
week later with a fresh batch of eggs laid therein. Many birds will
never return to a nest which has once been robbed, but others, like
the King-Crow and the Little Shrike (_Lanius vittatus_) will continue
laying even after the nest has been _twice_ robbed. The very day after
the nest has been cleared of perhaps four slightly incubated eggs, a
fresh one that otherwise would assuredly never have seen the light is
laid, and that, too, a fertile egg, which, if not meddled with, will
be hatched off in due course. It might be supposed that immediately on
discovering their loss, nature urged the birds to new intercourse,
the result of which was the fertile egg, and this, in some cases, is
probably really the case; Martins and others of the Swallow kind being
often to be seen busy with 'love's pleasing labour' before their eggs
have been well stowed away by the collector. But this will not account
for instances that I have observed of birds in confinement, who
separated from the male before they had laid their full number, and
then later, just when they began to sit depr