670 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVI. 



bird had not deserted, but was actually sitting, when I found it, though the 

 nest had been pushed 2 or 3 feet out of place by the tree in falling. 



The nest was on the underside of a leaf of a thorny climber {Smilax 

 macrophylla, I believe) common in Lower Burma, which bears thorns all 

 over its stems and along the ribs of the leaves, which are up to nine inches 

 or a foot in length ; the local name is ' Katcho.' It was hung from the 

 leaf by about 100 little threads of silk, each worked into the material 

 ef the nest, pushed through the leaf, and knotted on the upperside. 

 These threads ran all round the back and sides of the nest, but were 

 especially numerous at two ends of the rough semicircle thus formed. On 

 the upper surface, the semicircle of^knots was about f " wide, and 5" in exter- 

 nal diameter. The front was open, and the nest was so built that when the 

 leaf was hanging naturally, there was a space of about If" between the 

 edge of the nest and the leaf in front, the back was close up against the 

 leaf. Water was kept out of the holes in the leaf by the knots ; when I 

 found it, it had been raining heavily, but the inside was quite dry. The 

 combined strength of the supporting threads was considerable. 



The nest itself was a cup, high at the two sides and low at the back and 

 front, made of vegetable fibre, ornamented scantily on the outside with 

 skeleton leaves, and bits of bamboo leaf. Round the lip of the nest were 

 several pieces of white, curly, bark from bamboo spathes, I think : these 

 were arranged in a strip, 2" long, and |" down just on the outside of and 

 below the lip. 



The nest was about 2f" across at the top, rather less from back to front, 

 and more from side to side, of rather the conventional "watch pocket '• 

 shape. Externally, it was 2|" deep at the front and back, and 3^" at the 

 sides: internally, If" deep at front and back, and correspondingly more 

 at the sides. The internal hollow was 1|" across from front to back, and 2" 

 from side to side : this makes the sides half an inch, and the bottom 1^" 

 thick. 



It was very compactly put together, and lined with vegetable down 

 somewhat scantily, mixed with fine fibres, the whole forming a pad at the 

 bottom of the nest which was easily removed. The rest of the nest was 

 entirely made of strips of brown vegetable (bark) fibres, finer towards the 

 inside, but no where more than /„'' across, which were not felted together, 

 but appeared to be piit in one by one and worked into shape ; from the 

 inside, the nest came to pieces easily, but outside it was bound round with 

 a few rather broader strips of fibre, which creased the outline of the nest. 



The nest was about 5' from the ground, on the top of a ridge with some 

 secondary growth round it (not dense as the soil was bad) in a patch of 

 open jungle of mixed bamboos and small trees. 



The eggs — 2 in number — were fairly set, and I can match them for 

 colour and markings from my small series of Arachnothera magna. In size, 

 they are 21, and 19-75 x 15 and 14-75 millimetres (= 83-78 x 59 and -85 

 inches). The colour is a sort of purple, or dark battle-ship grey with minute 

 net-like, or crack-like marks all over them : one egg has no other markings 

 except a faint ring of darker grey at the large end. The other egg, which 

 is the lighter in the back ground and has a greenish tinge, has dark grey 

 spots all over it. Both eggs are glossy and pitted, with a hard, fine grained 

 shell rather like eggs of Ploccelki javanensis, but not so thick. 



Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker tells me that he has never seen a nest of Arach- 

 nothera magna as small as this, while Arachnothera magna and Arachnothera 

 longirostis both use skeleton leaves extensively in the making of the nest, 

 instead of fibre, as in this case. 



As I believe that the nest and eggs of Arachnothera aurata have never 

 been found before, I send you the above rather full description. Although 



