242 SYLV1ID.E. 



with small lumps of woolly vegetable down, and built between two 

 leaves carefully sewn to the nest in the same way as the nests of 

 Ortliotomus sutorius. The eggs, three or four in number, are white, 

 sparingly speckled with light reddish chestnut, with a cap more or 

 less dense of the same markings at the large end. All of the eggs 

 in the above-mentioned nests were of this type. I found the nests 

 in a grass Beerh near Deesa, studded over with low ber bushes 

 (Zizyphus jujuba\ generally about 2 or 3 feet from the ground, and 

 in similar situations to those selected by Prinia socialis, often 

 amongst dry nullahs overgrown with low bushes and long grass." 



Mr. Vidal notes in his list of the Birds of the South Konkan : 

 " Common in mangrove-swamps, reeds, hedgerows, thickets, and 

 bush-jungle throughout the district. Breeds during the rainy 

 months." 



Mr. Gates writes from Pegu : " Nest with three fresh eggs on 

 the 19th August ; no details appear necessary except the colour 

 of the eggs, since this bird appears to lay two kinds of eggs. My 

 eggs are very glossy, of a light blue speckled with minute dots of 

 reddish brown, more thickly so at the large end than elsewhere." 



The nests sent by Mr. Blewitt are regular Tailor-birds' nests, 

 composed chiefly of very fine grass, about the thickness of fine 

 human hair, with no special lining, carefully sewn with cobwebs, 

 silk from cocoons, or wool, into one or two leaves, which often 

 completely envelop it, so as to leave no portion of the true nest 

 visible. 



The eggs belong to at least two very distinct types. Both are 

 typically rather slender ovals, a good deal compressed towards one 

 end; but in both somewhat broader and more or less pyriform 

 varieties occur. In both the shell is exquisitely fine and glossy ; 

 in some specimens it is excessively glossy. In both the ground- 

 colour is a very delicate pale greenish blue, occasionally so pale that 

 the ground is all but white in one type entirely unspeckled and 

 unspotted, in the other finely and thickly speckled everywhere, and 

 towards the large end more or less spotted, with brownish or 

 purplish red. The markings are densest towards the large end, 

 where they either actually form, or exhibit a strong tendency to 

 form, a more or less conspicuous speckled, semi-confluent zone. 



Out of fifty-six eggs, twenty-one belong to the latter type. As 

 in Dicrurus ater, the two types never appear to be found in the 

 same nest ; but the nests in which the two types are found are 

 precisely similar, and the parent birds are identical. 



In length the eggs vary from 0'53 to 0'62, and in width from 

 0-4 to O45 ; but the average of fifty-six eggs is 0*58 by 0-42. 

 There is no difference whatever in the size of the two types. 



383. Franklinia rufescens (Blyth). Beavan's Wren-Warbler. 



Prinia beavani, Wald., Hume, Cat. no. 538 bis. 

 Mr. Gates, who found the nest of this Warbler in Pegu, says : 



