1STEOEFIS.	277
" The eggs are oval in shape, white, with a pinkish tinge when
fresh, very minutely spotted and speckled with light red, most
dense'ly at the larger end. The average of twelve eggs is 0-62
by 043."
* The eggs are moderately broad and regular ovals, usually some-
what compressed towards one end, but occasionally exhibiting no
trace of this. The shell is very fine and delicate, but, as a rale,
entirely devoid of gloss. The ground-colour varies from pure to
pinky white. The markings are always minute, but in some they
are comparatively much bolder and larger than in others, and they
vary in colour from reddish pink to a comparatively bright red.
In many eggs the markings are much more dense towards the
laro-e end, where they form, or exhibit a strong tendency to form,
an & irregular, more or less confluent zone; and wherever the
markings are dense there a certain number of tiny pale purple
or lilac spots or clouds will be found intermingled with and under-
lying the red markings. Some eggs show notie of these spots
and exhibit no tendency to form a zone, being pretty uniformly
speckled and spotted all over. Some are not very unlike eggs of
the Grasshopper and Dartford "Warblers; others, again, are almost
counterparts of the eggs of Franlclinia buchanani.
In length the eggs vary from 0*6 to 0*68, and in breadth from
0-46 to 0-51.
446. Neomis flavolivaceus, Hodgs.*    The Aberrant Warbler.
Neornis flavolivacea, Hodgs., Jerd. £. Ind. ii, p. 188.
Mr. W. Theobald makes the following remarks on the breeding
of this bird at Darjeeling :—" Lays in the second week in July.
Eggs three in number, blunt, ovato-pyriform. Size 0*69 by 0-55.
Colour deep dull claret-red, with a darker band at broad end.
Nest, a deep cup, outside of bamboo-leaves, inside fine vegetable
fibres, lined with feathers."
From Sikhiin Mr. G-ammie writes :—" I have found this Tree-
Warbler (though why it should be called a Tree-Warbler I cannot
imagine, for it sticks closely to grass and low scrub, and never by
any chance perches on a tree) breeding from May to July at
elevations from 3500 up to 6000 feet. All the nests I have seen
were of a globular shape with entrance near the top. Both in
shape and position the nest much resembles that of Suya atrigu-
laris, and is, I have no doubt, the one brought to Jerclon as be-
longing to that bird. It is placed in grassy bushes, in open country,
within a foot or so of the ground, and is made of bamboo-leaves
and, for the size of the bird, coarse grass-stems, with an inner layer
of fine grass-panicles, from which the seeds have dropped, and
* I have transferred Hodgson's notes under this title in the •* Rough Draft'
to Horornis fortipes, to which bird Hodgson's account of the nidification un-
doubtedly relates, his type-birds No. 900 being Neornis assimilis.—"En.