HYPOLAIS. 255

of from a,-mile to four miles. The nest was nearly egg-shaped, with
a circular entrance near the top. It was loosely woven with coarse
and fine grass, and a little of! the fibre of the "sun" (Crotalaria
juneea), and very neatly felted on the whole interior surface of
the lower two thirds with a compact coating of the clown of
flowering-grasses and little bits of spider's web. It was about 5
inches in i's longest and 3i inches in its shortest diameter. It
contained three fresh eggs, which were white, very thickly speckled
with brownish pink, in places confluent and having a decided ten-
dency to form a zone near the large end. Three or four days later
we shot the female at the same spot.

A similar nest and two eggs, taken in Jhansi on the 12th August,
were sent me with one of the parent birds by Mr. F. R. Blewitt,
and, again, another nest with four eggs was sent me from Hosh-
ungabad.

There ought to be no doubt about these nests and eggs, the more
so that I have several specimens of the bird from various parts
of the North-Western Provinces and Central Provinces killed in
August and September, but somehow I do not feel quite certain
that we have not made some mistake. Beyond doubt the great
mass of this species migrate and breed further north. I have never
obtained specimens in June or July; and if these nests really, as
the evidence seems to show, belonged to the birds that were shot on
or near them, these latter must have bred in India before or after
their migration, as well as in Northern Asia.

Though one may make minute differences, I do not think either
of the three nests or sets of eggs could be certainly separated from
those of FranJclinia buclianani, which might well have eggs about
both in April and August; and I am not prepared to say that in
each of these three cases Hypolais rama, which frequents pre-
cisely the same kind of bushes that F. bucliunani breeds in, may
not accidentally have been shot in the immediate proximity to a
nest of the latter, the owner of which had crept noiselessly away,
as these birds so often do.

Dr. Jerdon says :—" I have obtained the nest and eggs of this
species on one occasion only at Jaulnah in the Dekhan ; the nest
was cup-shaped, made of roots and grass, and contained four pure
white eggs."

I do not attach undue weight to this, for Dr. Jerdon did not care
about eggs, and was rather careless about them ; but still his state-
ment has to be noted, and the whole matter requires careful inves-
tigation.

Mr. Doig found this species breeding on the Eastern Narra in
Sind. He writes :—"I first obtained eggs of this bird in March
1870. The first nest was found by one of my men, who afterwards
showed me a bird close to the place he got the eggs, which he said
was either the bird to which the nest and eggs belonged or one of
the same kind. This I shot and sent to Mr. Hume with one of the
eggs to identify. Some time after I again came across a lot of
these birds breeding, and this time lay in wait myself for the bird to