ZOSTEROPS. 141 



nest, somewhat larger than the last described, the nest is made o£ 

 moss slightly tacked together with cobwebs and lined with line 

 grass-fibres. Another nest, a very regular shallow cup, ■with an 

 egg-cavit\' 2 inches in diameter and an inch in depth, is composed 

 almost entirely of the soft silky down of the Calatroins (jiijantea, 

 rather thickly lined with very fine hair-like grass, and very thinly 

 coated exteriorly with a little of this same grass, moss, and thread. 

 Another, with a similar-sized cavity, but nearly three-fourths of an 

 inch thick everywhere, is externally a mass of moss, moss-roots, 

 and very fine lichen, and is lined entirely with very soft and bril- 

 liantly white satin-like vegetable down. Another, with about the 

 same-sized cavity, but the walls of which are scarcely one-fourth 

 of an inch in thickness, is composed entirely of this satiny down, 

 thinly coated exteriorly and interiorly with excessively line moss- 

 roots (roots so fine that most of tliem are much thinner than human 

 hair) ; a few black horsehairs, which look coarse and thick beside 

 the other materials of the nest, are twisted round and round in the 

 interior of the egg-cavity. Other nests might be made entirely of 

 tow, so far as their appearance goes ; and in fact with a very large 

 series before me, no two seem to be constructed of the same 

 materials. 



I have nests before me now, taken in September, March, June, 

 and August, all of which when found contained eggs. 



Two is certainly the normal number of the eggs ; about one 

 fifth of the nests I have seen contained three, and once only I 

 found four. 



From Murree Colonel C. H. T. Marshall informs us that he took 

 the eggs in June at an elevation of about 6000 feet. 



Colonel G. F. L. Marshall says: — "I have taken eggs of this 

 species at Cawnpore in the middle of June. I found six nests, five 

 of which were in neem-trees. I also found the nest in Naini Tal 

 at 7000 feet above the sea, with young in the middle of June ; one 

 only of all the nests I have seen was lined, and that was lined 

 with feathers ; they were, as a rule, about eight feet from the 

 ground, but one was nearly forty feet up." 



Capt. Ilutton gives a very full account of the nidification of this 

 species. He says : — " These beautiful little birds are exceedingly 

 common at Mussoorie, at an elevation of about 5000 feet, during 

 summer, but I never saw them much higher. They arrive from 

 the plains about the middle of April, on the 17th of which month 

 I saw a pair commence building in a thick bush of Hibiscus, and 

 on the 27th of the same month the nest contained three small 

 eggs bard-set. I subsequently took a second from a similar bush, 

 and several from the drooping branches of oak-trees, to the twigs 

 of which they were fastened. It is not placed on a branch, but is 

 suspended between two thin twigs, to which it is fastened by floss 

 silk torn from the cocoons of Bomhijx huttoni, Westw., and by a 

 few slender fibres of the bark of trees or hair according to circum- 

 stances. 



" So slight and so fragile is the little oval cup that it is aston- 



