OEATEROPtrS. 79

separate the Madras, Mangalore, and Anjango birds, and insist on
their being different species ; but for niy part, seeing how the
birds vary in each locality and what a perfect and unbroken chain
of intermediate forms connects the most different-looking exam pies,
and that all the several races are separable from the other species
of this group by their more or less conspicuously pale heads, I
prefer'to keep them all as C. griseus.

This species, thus considered, breeds apparently twice a year
from. April to June, and again in October and even later.

About Madras the nest is commonly placed in thick thorny
hedges of a shrub locally known as " Kurka-puli," said by Balfour
to be Garcinia camboyia, but which does not look like a Gfarcinia
at all. The nest is a loosely-made cup, composed of grass-stems
and roots, and the eggs vary from three to five in number.

Dr. Jerdon says :—" 1 have often found the nest of this bird,
which is- composed of small twigs and roots, carelessly and loosely
put together, in general at no great height from the ground. It
lays three or four blue eggs."

Colonel Butler writes :—" A nest containing four fresh eggs
apparently of this species (it being the common Babbler in this
district) was brought to me by some wood-cutters on the 18th
March, 1880. It was taken in the jungles about six miles from
Belgaum, and measured about 2| inches in diameter and about
2 inches deep interiorly, and was of the usual Babbler type,
consisting of dry stems loosely but neatly constructed. The eggs
were highly glossed and deep bluish green, some people might say
greenish blue/'

Mr. Iver Macpherson writes of this bird from Mysore:—" I
have found their nests in every month between March and August,
and they possibly breed both earlier and later. The nests are
generally fixed in thorny bushes and at no great height off the
ground. Eour is the usual number of eggs laid, but very often
five are found, and I feel much inclined to think that the fifth egg
is often that of H. varius"

The eggs of this species that I possess were taken by Mr. Davi-
son in May, in the immediate neighbourhood of Madras. They
are all pretty regular, somewhat cylindrical ovals, excessively
glossy, spotless, and of a deep greenish blue, much deeper than
the eggs of any of the other Crater opi are as a rule; in fact,
they approach in colouring to the eggs of Garrulax albigularis.

They vary in length from 0-9 to 1*0, and in breadth from 0-62
to O74; but I have seen too few eggs to be able to strike any
reliable average.

112. Crateropus striatus (Sw.). The Southern-Indian Babbler.
Malacocereus striatus (/Sto.), Hume, Cat. no. 432 Hs.

Colonel Legge, writing of this bird's nidification in Ceylon,
says:—" The breeding-season of the ' Seven Brothers' lasts from