the Himalayan or Nilghiri ones.

Taking the eggs as a whole, I think that in size and shape they are
about intermediate between the eggs of the European Carrion-Crow and
Rook. But they vary, as I said, astonishingly in size, from 1·5 to
1·95 in length, and in breadth from 1·12 to 1·22, and I have one
perfectly spherical egg, a deformity of course, which measures 1·25 by
1·2.

The average of thirty Himalayan eggs is 1·73 by 1·18, of twenty Plains
eggs 1·74 by 1·2, and of fifteen Nilghiri eggs 1·7 by 1·18. I would
venture to predict that with fifty of each, there would not be a
hundredth of an inch between their averages.


7. Corvus splendens, Vieill. _The Indian House-Crow_.

Corvus splendens, _Vieill. Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 298.
Corvus impudicus, _Hodgs., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 663.

Throughout India and Upper Burma the Common Crow resides and breeds,
not ascending the hills either in Southern or Northern India to any
great elevation, but breeding up to 4000 feet in the Himalayas.

The breeding-season _par excellence_ is June and July, but occasional
nests will be found earlier even in Upper India, and in Southern and
Eastern India a great number lay in May. The nests are commonly placed
in trees without much regard to size or kind, though densely foliaged
ones are preferred, and I have just as often found several in the same
tree as single ones. At times they will build in nooks of ruins