LARYIVOEA. 127

The eggs of this species, which I have received from. Kotagherry
and other parts of the Nilghiris, are broad, nearly regular ovals,
slightly compressed towards the lesser end; considerably elon-
gated, and more or less spherical, and pyriform varieties occur.
The shell is fine, and has a slight gloss; the ground-colour is pale
salmon-pink or pinkish-white, occasionally greyish white. The
whole egg is, as a rule, finely speckled, spotted, and splashed with
pinkish brown or brownish pink. The markings, in most eggs,
everywhere very fine, are often considerably more dense at the
large end, where they are not unusually more or less underlaid by
a pinkish cloud, with which they form an irregular ill-defined and
inconspicuous cap.

- At times more boldly and richly marked eggs are met with ; one
now before me is everywhere thickly streaked with dull pink, in
places purplish, and over this is thinly but rather conspicuously
spotted and irregularly blotched (the blotches being small however)
with light burnt sienna-brown.

In length they vary from 1*18 to 1-48 inch, and in breadth from
0-92 to 1 inch. "

191. Larvivora brtumea, Hoclgs. The Indian Blue Ghat.

Larvivora cyana, Gould, Jerd. JR. Ind. ii, p. 145; H-ume, Hough
Draft N. fy E. no. 507.

I have never obtained the nest of the Indian Blue Chat. Mr.
Davison found it on the Nilghiris. He says : —" I really quite
forget the details of that one egg which I brought you along with
the skin of the parent, but it was taken in May on the Nilghiris.
I remember very well another nest of this species, which I took in
the latter end of March or the beginning of April in a shola or
detached piece of jungle about 9 miles from Ootacamund.

" The nest was in a hole in the trunk of a small tree, about 5
feet from the ground, and was composed chiefly of moss, but mixed
with dry leaves and twigs. It contained three young birds, appa-
rently about four or five days old."

The late Mr. Mandelli sent me a nest of this species which was
found at Lebong (elevation 5500 feet) on the 16th May, It con-
tained three eggs, and was placed on the ground amongst grass on a
bank made by the cutting of a hill-road. It is a broad shallow nest,
composed exteriorly of vegetable fibre, scraps of dead leaves and
tiny pieces of moss matted closely together, and is rather thickly
lined with black and red hairs, amongst which one or two soft
downy feathers are incorporated. The external diameter of the
nest is about 4 inches, the height about 1-5, the cavity is about
2-75 inches in diameter, and rather less than 1 in depth.

Two eggs taken by Mr. Darling"* are very elongated, somewhat
cylindrical ovals, very obtuse at both ends. In both, the shell is
fine, and has an appreciable though not brilliant gloss. In one, the

* I cannot find any account of the finding of the nest of this bird .by Mr.
Darling amongst Mr. Hume's notes.—ED.