s soon after this Mr. Brooks saw the eggs with Mr. Hume
and identified them as being those _H. rama_ and identical with eggs
he saw at home collected by, I think, Mr. Seebohm of this species
in Siberia. Only fancy a bird breeding on the Narra of all places,
especially in May, June, and July, in preference to Siberia! Locally
they are very numerous, as I collected upwards of 90 to 100 eggs in
one field about eight acres in size. They build in stunted tamarisk
bushes, or rather in bushes of this kind which originally were cut
down to admit of cultivation being carried on, and which afterwards
had again sprouted. These bushes are very dense, and in their centre
is situated the nest, composed of sedge, with a lining of fine grass,
mixed sometimes with a little soft grass-reed. The eggs are, as a
rule, four in number, of a dull white ground-colour with brown spots,
the large end having as a rule a ring round it of most delicate, fine,
hair-like brown lines, something similar to the tracing to be seen on
the eggs of _Drymoeca inornata_. The egg in size is also similar to
those of that species."

The eggs of this species vary from broad to moderately elongated
ovals, but they are almost always somewhat pointed towards the small
end; the shell is fine but as a rule glossless; here and there,
however, an egg exhibits a faint gloss. The ground-colour is whitish,
never pure white, with an excessively faint greenish, greyish, creamy,
or pinky tinge. The markings are very variable in amount and extent,
but they are always black or nearly so and pale inky grey; perhaps
typically the markings consist of a zone of black hair-lines twisted
and entangled together, in which irregular shaped spots and small
blotches of the same colour appear to have been caught, which zone is
underlaid and more or less surrounded by clouds, streaks, and spots of
pale inky grey. This zone is typically about the large end, but in one
or two eggs is near the middle of the egg and in one or two is about
the small end. Outside this zone a few small specks and spots, and
rarely one or two tiny blotches, of both black and grey are thinly
scattered; occasionally, however, the hair-lines so characteristic of
this egg are almost entirely wanting, there is no apparent zone, and
the markings, spots, and specks are thinly and irregularly distributed
about the entire surface; here and there the whole of the dark
markings on the egg are entirely confined to the zone, els