iatures of some
of the nests of _Dicrurus_, composed of excessively fine grass-stems,
coated exteriorly all round the sides with cobwebs, and, in the case
of one of them, plastered exteriorly with tiny films of bark and dry
leaves like some of the nests of the _Pericrocoti_. Both have a little
soft silky vegetable down at the bottom of the cavity. The one nest is
about two inches, the other about two and a half inches in diameter
exteriorly, and both are a little less than three quarters of an inch
high outside. The cavity in the one is about an inch and a half, in
the other about an inch and three quarters in diameter, and both are
about half an inch deep.

Eggs received from Sikhim are broad ovals, glossless, with
greenish-white grounds, profusely speckled and mottled with slightly
varying shades of brown, here and there intermingled with dull, pale
inky purple. The markings are densest generally round the broadest
part of the egg. They measured from 0.61 to 0.7 in length, and from
0.51 to 0.55 in breadth.

486. Tephrodornis pelvicus (Hodgs.). _The Nepal Wood-Shrike_.

Tephrodornis pelvica (_Hodgs.), Jerd. B. Ind._ i, p. 409; _Hume. cat._
no. 263.

The Nepal Wood-Shrike is a permanent resident throughout Burma, Assam,
Cachar, and the sub-Himalayan Terais and Ranges to which the typical
Indo-Burmese fauna extends. Still we have no information as to its
nidification, and the only egg of the species that I possess was
extracted from the oviduct of a female shot by Mr. Davison on the 26th
of March, 1874, near Tavoy in Tenasserim. The egg is rather a handsome
one--very Shrike-like in its character, but rather small for the size
of the bird. In shape it is a broad oval, very slightly compressed
towards one end. The shell is fine and compact, but has no gloss.
The ground is white, with the faintest possible greenish tinge only
noticeable when the egg is placed alongside a pure white one, such as
a Bee-eater's for instance. The markings are bold, but except at the
large end not very dense--spots and blotches of a light clear brown,
and (chiefly at the large end) somewhat pale inky grey. Where the two
colours overlap each other, there the result of the mixture is a dark
dusky brown, so that the markings appear to be of three colours. Fully
half the markings are gathered into a broad conspicuous but very
broken and irregular zone about the broad end. The egg measured only
0.86 by 0.69.

Subsequently to writing the abov