BY A. J. NORTH. 407 



A nest of this species now before me, taken from the Australian 

 Museum collection, is a dome-shaped structure composed of the 

 dried wiry stems of a Drosera, and the flowering portions of the 

 Banksia cones, spiders' webs, &c., all matted up together, and 

 lined inside with the white downy seeds of some composite plant. 

 It measures exteriorly four and a-quarter inches in height, by 

 three inches in width ; the aperture which is oval and near the 

 top being one inch high, by one and a-quarter inch in width. 

 The nest is firmly packed in the upright forked branches of a 

 Banksia, and was placed about five feet from the ground ; it 

 contained two eggs of a fleshy-white ground colour, freckled all 

 over with irregularly shaped markings of a reddish-brown, par- 

 ticularly towards the larger end where they form a well-defined 

 zone. Leng-th (A), 0-7 x 0-52 inch ; (B), 0-69 x 0-52 inch. 



I have described the above nest and eggs upon the authority of 

 Mr. Geo. Masters, who assures me there is not the slightest doubt 

 about them, he having personally taken them on the 3rd of Dec, 

 1868, at King George's Sound, Western Australia. 



Mr. Gould in his ' Handbook to the Birds of Australia,' Yol. I., 

 p. 371, writes of the nest of this species, as being "composed 

 of grasses lined with a few feathers, and the eggs five in number, 

 of a white colour, slightly tinged with greenish grey." 



I am inclined to believe that Mr. Gould has described the nest 

 and eggs of some other bird, probably one of the Ploceidce family, 

 as neither the materials of which the nest is composed, nor the 

 number and coloixr of the eggs, agree with what obtains in the 

 case of the other members of the genus Acanthiza. 



ACANTHIZA UROPYGIALIS, Gould. 



For the eggs of this species I am indebted to Mr. K. H. Bennett, 

 who procured them at Mossgiel, on the 15th of October, 1886. 

 The nest, he informs me, was similar to that of A. fyrrhopygia, 

 and was built in a low thickly-foliaged tree about five feet from 

 the ground. Eggs three in number for a sitting, of a delicate 

 fleshy-white, minutely freckled all over with light reddish-brown 



