feet lower down the
hill, I stood upon a mass of snow which had accumulated in the bed of
a mountain-stream."

Captain Charles R. Cock writes to me that he "took numbers of nests at
Sonamerg, in the Sindh Valley in Cashmere, during a nesting trip that
I took in 1871 with my valued and esteemed friend W.E. Brooks, Esq.
Although at the time of our finding the nest of this Warbler we were
about 80 miles apart, yet we both found our first nest on the same
day--the 31st May. I believe he was by a couple of hours or so the
winner, as I do not think the egg had ever been taken before.

"Breeds in May or June on the ground in banks; makes a globular nest
of moss, well lined with fine grass, musk-deer hair, or horse-hair. It
lays five eggs, white spotted with rusty red, inclining to a zone at
the larger end."

Typically the eggs of this species are broad ovals, slightly
compressed towards one end; the ground pure white and almost perfectly
devoid of gloss, speckled and spotted with red or purplish red, the
markings, most dense about the large end, often forming an irregular
mottled cap or zone. These are the general characters, but the eggs
vary very much in shape, size, colour, and density of markings. Some
eggs are almost spherical; others are somewhat elongated; others
slightly pyriform. As a body, alike in shape and coloration, they
remind one of the eggs of many species of Indian Tit, especially
those of _Lophophanes melanolophus_. In some eggs the markings are
a slightly brownish brickdust-red, moderate sized spots and specks
scattered pretty thickly over the whole surface, but gathered into
a dense, more or less confluent, zone or cap towards the large end.
Intermingled with these primary markings a few pale purple spots
are scattered towards the large end of the eggs. In other eggs the
markings are mostly mere specks, and in this type of egg the specks
are mostly brownish purple, in some almost black. Occasionally an
egg is almost entirely spotless, having only towards the large end a
clouded dingy reddish-purple zone. In some eggs again the colour of
the markings is pale and washed out. As a rule, the eggs in which the
markings are of the brickdust-red type have these larger, bolder, and
more numerous; while those in which the markings are purple have them
of a more minute character.

The shape of the eggs, as already noticed, varies much, being
sometimes longer than those of _P. trochilus_, and at other times very