"The nest of the King-Crow that we took was of the ordinary type; in fact I have noticed scarcely any difference in the shape or materials of all the numerous nests of this common bird that I have yet seen. They are all composed of tiny twigs and fine grass-stems, and the roots of the khus-khus grass, as a rule, neatly and tightly woven together, and exteriorly bound round with a good deal of cobweb, in which a few feathers are sometimes entangled. The cavity is broad and shallow, and at times lined with horsehair or fine grass, but most commonly only with khus. The bottom of the nest is very thin, but the sides or rim rather firm and thick; in this case the cavity was 4 inches in diameter, and about 1½ in depth, and contained three pure white glossless eggs. In the very next tree, however (a mango, and this is perhaps their favourite tree), was another similar nest, containing four eggs, slightly glossy, with a salmon-pink tinge throughout, and numerous well-marked brownish-red specks and spots, most numerous towards the large end, looking vastly like Brobdingnagian specimens of the Rocket-bird's eggs. The variation in this bird's eggs is remarkable; out of more than one hundred eggs nearly one third have been pure white, and between the dead glossless purely white egg and a somewhat glossy, warm pinky grounded one, with numerous well-marked spots and specks of maroon colour, dull-red, and red-brown or even dusky, every possible gradation is found. Each set of eggs, however, seems to be invariably of the same type, and we have never yet found a quite white and a well coloured and marked egg in the same nest. "These birds are very jealous of the approach of other birds even of their own species to a nest in which they have eggs, and many a little family would this year have been safely reared, and their ovate cradles have escaped the plundering hands of my shikaries, had not attention been invariably called to the thereabouts of the nest by the pertinacious and vicious rushes of one or other of the parents from near their nest at every feathered thing that; passed them by." Captain Hutton says:--"This species, which appears to be generally diffused throughout India, is not uncommon in the Dehra Doon, but does not ascend the hills; it breeds in June, laying four eggs of somewhat variable size. They are pure white, thus differing widely from those of the supposed _D. longcaudatus_ of Mussoorie. "It is evident likewise that the eggs which Captain Tickell assigns to this species do not belong to it. (_Vide_ Journal As. Soc. vol. xvii. p. 304.)