The egg was a broad oval, slightly compressed towards one end, but not at all pointed. The shell very fine and with a slight gloss, the ground-colour a delicate salmon-pink, and with a broad ring of deep brownish-pink spots and blotches intermingled with pale purple subsurface-looking clouds and spots round the large end. The rest of the egg with some half-dozen similar spots. He subsequently sent me the following note:--"This species is common in the Darjeeling district up to 4000 feet or so. It rather affects the neighbourhood of bungalows, and is a very lively neighbour, especially in the mornings and evenings. These birds are continually quarrelling among themselves, sallying after insects, or making their best attempts at singing. They are _dead_ on Kites, Crows, and such-like depredators. For several days an Owl (_Bulaca newarensis_) was flying about near the Cinchona Bungalow at Mongpho, and being a stupid creature at the best, and doubly so during daylight when it had no business to be abroad, was evidently considered fair game by the Long-tailed Drongo and Swallow-Shrikes, and so awfully 'sat upon' by them, that its life must have become a burden to it until it left the place in despair of ever getting either peace or comfort about Mongpho. "They lay in April and May, and have but one brood in the year. The nest is generally either built against a tall bamboo, well up, supported on the branch of twigs at a node, or near the extremity of a branch of a tree, sometimes on quite slender branches of young trees, which get so tremendously wafted about by the wind as to make the retention of the eggs or young in the nest appear almost miraculous. When anyone meddles with the nest, the owners make bold dashes at the head of the robber. The Darjeeling birds are not so knowing as their fellows of Murree, the females of whom are said to sit on the nests with their tails along the boughs so as to entirely conceal themselves. I have seen dozens of the nests here, and never once saw the female in this position, but always with her tail _across_ the bough. The nest is a compact shallow cup, measuring externally 4·5 inches across by 1·75 in height, while the cavity is 3 inches in diameter by about 1·2 in depth. It is made of twigs bound up with cobwebs, among which a few lichens are intermingled. The lining is a mixture of straw-coloured root-fibres and fine branchlets of the same coloured grass-panicles."