132 PLOCEIDiE. 



rose. The male and female labour at the work with equal 

 assiduity, and share equally the task of rearing the young." 



Writing from Sikhini, Mr. Grammie says: — "A nest taken out 

 of a small tree some ten feet from the ground in the valley of the 

 E-yang, about 2500 feet above the level of the sea, on the 20th 

 June, contained six hard-set eggs. For so diminutive a bird the 

 nest is enormous ; externally it is fully 5 inches in diameter aad 

 7 inches in height, and even tlie egg-cavity was nearly 6 inches 

 deep and more than 2 inches in diameter inside, but the actual 

 entrance was of coarse much smaller. It is entirely composed of 

 grass, the basal portion and the exterioi- at the back, where it was 

 wedged against the stem of the tree, of very coarse and rough 

 grass, much of it broad-bladed, the upper portion and the whole of 

 the interior of very fine grass." 



Later, he remarked : — " This Munia lays between the middle of 

 June and the middle of August, at elevations of from 2000 to 

 4000 feet. It builds from 6 to 20 feet from the ground, in open 

 country, in shrubs and small trees. The nest is globular, entirely 

 made of the grass-panicles from which the seeds have dropped, 

 intermixed with a few bamboo-leaves, and measures externally 

 about (3 inches in height by the same in width, while the cavity is 

 about 3 inches in diameter by the same in depth from lower edge 

 of entrance. The entrance is in the side, close to the top, with 

 a quantity of the grass of which the nest is made projecting over 

 it. The eggs are white, and five or six in number. 



" This bird is much disliked by the natives, on account of the 

 large quantities of rice it consumes. I have seen a flock of twenty 

 or thirty clinging to a single head of flowering grass, when they 

 appear, from a little distance, more like a swarm of bees than 

 a flock of birds. 



" My bird-skinner came back from Chola, but with very little, 

 and nothing of any consequence. About ten days ago (IGth 

 November) I saw the young of U. acuticauda only half-fledged. 

 I asked myself how it is that the young of this bird is hatched so 

 much later in the year than all the other birds about here ; and it 

 struck me that the parents had sense enough not to have their 

 young hatched until the rice (on which they chiefly feed) was 

 ripe, so that they could, with the minimum of trouble, feed their 

 brood. In the same way the Hornbill places its nest near or in 

 fruit-trees, and contrives to hatch its young when the fruit of 

 those trees is ripe, with which the male can easily feed the female 

 and young. The time of the most abundant supply of food 

 appears to me to have more influence on the nesting-tiuie than 

 has the season of the year. The same principle, in a kind of 

 way, partly applies to human beings : for instance, in Kent and 

 Hussex, the ' hopping-time,' when there is most money about, 

 decides the time for marrying of many of the working-people 

 of those counties." 



Dr. Jerdon says : — " Its nest is of the usual structure, large, and 

 loosely made of flue grass, and there arc generally live or six white 

 esss. I found it far from rare on the Khasia Hills." 



