om Pegu:--"Nest with three fresh eggs on
the 3rd March near Pegu."

The eggs are very Shrike-like in appearance, and many of them are
perfect miniatures of the eggs of _Lanius lahtora_, but some of them
have a more uniformly brown tint than any of this latter species that
I have yet met with. The ground-colour is generally either a very pale
greenish white or a creamy-stone colour, and more or less thickly
spotted and blotched with different shades of yellowish and reddish
brown; many of the markings are almost invariably gathered into a
conspicuous, but irregular and ill-defined, zone near the large end,
in which zone clouds of subsurface-looking, pale, and dingy purple,
not usually observable on any other portion of the egg, are thickly
intermingled. The texture of the shell is fine and close, but scarcely
any gloss is ever perceptible. Occasionally the eggs are very faintly
coloured, and have a dull white ground, while the markings consist of
only a few spots and specks of very pale purple and pale rust-colour
confined to a zone near the large end.

In length the eggs vary from 0.69 to 0.8 inch, and in breadth from
0.57 to 0.65 inch; but the average of a dozen eggs is 0.75 by 0.61
inch nearly.

490. Pericrocotus speciosus (Lath.). _The Indian Scarlet Minivet_.

Pericrocotus speciosus (_Lath.). Jerd. B. Ind._ i, p. 419; _Hume,
Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 271.

Captain Hutton records that the Indian Scarlet Minivet breeds both on
the Doon and in the hills overlooking it, to an elevation of about
5000 feet. He says:--"The nest is generally placed high up on the
branch of some tall tree, often overhanging the side of a fearful
precipice. On the 6th and 17th of June I procured two nests in ravines
opening upon the Doon, one of which contained four, and the other five
eggs, of a dull-white colour, sparingly spotted and blotched with
earthy brown, more thickly so at the larger end, where they form an
open ring of spots; other small blotches of a fainter colour are seen
beneath the shell.

"It is a curious fact that in the latter nest, out of the five eggs
_three_ were ringed at the larger end, and the other two _at the
smaller end_. The nest is rather coarsely made, being very thick at
the sides, and the materials not neatly interwoven; it is composed
externally of dried grasses and the fine stalks of various small
plants, interspersed with bits of cotton and grass-roots, and lined
with the fine seed-stalks of small