Mr. I. Macpherson writes from Mysore:--"This bird is occasionally found with _C. griseus_ in the bigger scrub forests, but its chief habitat is the larger forests. Its breeding-season is much the same as _C. griseus_ but unlike it, it does not select thorny bushes for building in, its nests being generally found in small trees or bamboo-clumps. Four is the usual number of eggs laid, but five are often found, and the fifth I expect is frequently that of _H. varius_."
Three eggs sent me by Mr. Carter from Coonoor, in the Nilghiries, are absolutely undistinguishable from those of _Argya malcolmi_. Like these they are a uniform, rather deep greenish blue, devoid of spots or markings, and very glossy. I do not think that, if the eggs of _A. malcolmi, C. malabaricus_, and _C. terricolor_ were once mixed, it would be possible to separate them with certainty. Other eggs taken by Mr. Davison are similar but slightly smaller, and, taking them as a whole, I think they average rather darker than those of the two species just mentioned.
The eggs vary in length from 0·93 to 1·02, and in breadth from 0·71 to 0·82; but the average of nine eggs is 0·97 by nearly 0·77.
111. Crateropus griseus (Gm.). _The White-headed Babbler_.
Malacocercus griseus (_Gm._), _Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 60; _Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 433.
I should say that the White-headed Babbler breeds all over the plain country of Southern India, not ascending the hills to any great elevation. At the same time, many people would very likely separate the Madras, Mangalore, and Anjango birds, and insist on their being different species; but for my part, seeing how the birds vary in each locality and what a perfect and unbroken chain of intermediate forms connects the most different-looking examples, and that all the several races are separable from the other species of this group by their more or less conspicuously pale heads, I prefer to keep them all as _C. griseus_.
This species, thus considered, breeds apparently twice a year from April to June, and again in October and even later.
About Madras the nest is commonly placed in thick thorny hedges of a shrub locally known as "Kurka-puli," said by Balfour to be _Garcinia cambogia_, but which does not look like a _Garcinia_ at all. The nest is a loosely-made cup, composed of grass-stems and roots, and the eggs vary from three to five in number.