92 CBATEBOPODIDJE.

ever, once seen it in a field of jute, which was alongside a village.
Its well-known note can be heard a long way off. I have several
times found nests in course of construction, but only once secured
a clutch of eggs. When the nests are being built, if the bush is at
all disturbed the nest is deserted. The earliest date on which I
found a nest was the 1st April, 1878 ; it was half finished, and as
I pulled the cane-leaves asunder to see if there were eggs, the birds
deserted it. After this I found four nests in cane-clumps on the
sides of roads, but they were empty, and as the birds abandoned
them in due course I despaired of getting any eggs; but on the
loth June, while going along a road, the edges of which were
bounded by the small embankments natives throw up round their
holdings, and which are always overgrown with ' sone' grass, I
saw one of these birds with a straw in its bill disappear at the
root of a small date-tree. The nest could be discerned from the
road. On the 20th June I returned and found two fresh eggs ;
the nest was placed at the junction of the frond and the stem of
the date-tree about five inches from the ground, and was an oval
deep cup and measured externally 5 inches deep by 3| broad. Egg-
cavity 2 broad and If deep, composed exclusively of c sone5 grass
with no lining."

The eggs of this species are broad ovals with a tolerably fine
gloss. The ground-colour is pure white. The whole of the larger
end of the egg is pretty thickly speckled and spotted with brown,
varying from an olive to a burnt sienna intermingled with little
spots and clouds of pale inky purple, and similar spots and specks
chiefly of the former colour, but smaller in size, scattered thinly
over the rest of the egg. In size they vary from 0*69 to 0-75 in
length, and from 0'55 to 0*6 in breadth.

135. Dumetia hyperythra (Frank!.). The Rufous-bellied
Babbler.

Dumetia hyperythra (FrankL). Jerd. B. Ind. ii; p. 26; Hume, Rough
Draft N. $ E. no. 397.

The E,ufous-bellied Babbler breeds throughout the Central
Provinces, Chota Nagpoor, Upper Bengal, the eastern portions of
the North-West Provinces, parts of Oudh, and even in the low
valleys of Kumaon.

It lays from the middle of June to the middle of August,
building a globular nest of broad grass-blades or bamboo-leaves
some 4 or 5 inches in diameter, sparingly lined with fine grass-
roots or a little hair, or sometimes entirely unlined. The nest is
placed sometimes on the ground amongst dead leaves, some of
which are not unfrequently incorporated in the structure; some-
times in coarse grass or some little shrub a foot or two from the
ground, but by preference, according to my experience, in amongst
the roots of a bamboo-clump.

Four is the usual number of eggs laid.