places: holes in old Chinar (Plane) trees, and in house-walls, under
the eaves of houses, &c. I did not note the materials of the nests,
but these will be the same as in England."

The eggs of this species are typically rather elongated ovals,
somewhat compressed towards one end. The shell is fine, but has only a
faint gloss. The ground-colour is a pale greenish white, but in some
eggs there is very little green, while in a very few the ground is
quite a bright green. The markings, sometimes very fine and close,
sometimes rather bold and thinly set, consist of specks or spots of
deep blackish brown, olive-brown, and pale inky purple. In most eggs
all these colours are represented, but in some eggs the olive-, in
others the blackish-brown is almost entirely wanting. In some eggs
the markings are very dense towards the large end, in others they are
pretty uniformly distributed over the whole surface; in some they are
very minute and speckly, in others they average the tenth of an inch
in diameter.

The eggs that I possess vary from 1·34 to 1·52 in length, and from
0·93 to 1·02 in breadth; but the average of sixteen eggs was 1·4 by
0·98.


10. Pica rustica (Scop.). _The Magpie_.

Pica bactriana, _Bp., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E_, no. 668 bis.

The Magpie breeds, we know, in Afghanistan, and also throughout Ladak
from the Zojee-la Pass right up to the Pangong Lake, but it breeds so
early that one is never in time for the eggs. The passes are not open