502 Lieut. H. R. Kelham on 



uncomfortable nighty lying in the bottom of a very narrow 

 and extremely leaky canoe^ drawn up on a sand bank in mid- 

 stream ; and, to quote from my note-book, " when I awoke, 

 a thick white mist hung over the river, saturating every thing, 

 like rain ; but as day broke this gradually cleared off; so, 

 wading ashore, I struck into the jungle along one of the 

 many pig-tracks leading inland. Before I got far from the 

 river I noticed a small plainly-coloured bird clinging to a 

 pendent creeper, fluttering its wings and uttering a shrill 

 piercing cry, and, on shooting it, found I had killed a speci- 

 men of A. modesta. On dissection it proved to be a female. 

 Length 7^ inches, bill along ridge 1^ ; irides brown ; legs and 

 bill flesh-colour, upper mandible of latter dusky ; upper parts, 

 wings, and tail yellowish green ; feathers of the last dark- 

 tipped, and having a white spot on one web ; feathers of the 

 crown scaly and dark-centred ; underparts pale green. It had 

 been feeding on beetles.''^ 



jiEthopyga siparaja (Rafii.). The Scarlet Honey-sucker. 



Though I saw this brilliantly coloured bird on two occa- 

 sions, once on Pulo Battam, once onPulo Oobin, islands near 

 Singapore, I am only able to record as actually obtained a 

 single specimen, a male, shot by a brother-officer among 

 some cocoa-nut trees near Bukit Timah, on 2nd of August, 

 1879. There were a pair of them picking out insects from 

 among the cocoa-nuts ; those I saw on the islands were simi- 

 larly employed. 



Chalcostetha insignis (Jard.). 



Swarms wherever there are cocoanut-plantations, parti- 

 cularly if they be on the sea-shore. During September 1879 

 I saw literally hundreds of these Honey-suckers among the 

 cocoa-nut trees at Tanjong Katong, Singapore. I also at dif- 

 ferent times got many specimens in Pulo Battam, Pulo Oolin, 

 Province Wellesley, and Malacca. 



In Singapore a favourite resort of mine was a plantation 

 near Tanglin, where I passed many an afternoon among these 

 little birds, which were so plentiful that I had every oppor- 

 tunity of observing them and their ways, as flitting from tree 



