AEACHNECHTHEA. 253 



in different localities, as indeed may be gathered from the various 

 notes which are subjoined. They breed all over the plains of 

 India, up to the very summit of the Nilghiris, and up to about 5000 

 feet, as a maximum, in the Himalayas. They certainly have two 

 broods in rapid succession, usually in the same nest, and I am not 

 at all sure that they do not have more. They will build almost 

 anywhere ; in and about gardens and in the verandahs of houses, 

 in little clumps of acacia trees, especially where these overhang 

 water, and far away in the jungle, or in the cane-brakes of the 

 Terai. When attached to shrubs or trees, the nests are generally 

 suspended from the fine terminal twig of some branch or the 

 frond of a cane. 



The nest is pendent, and composed of all kinds of materials 

 beautifully woven together with the silkiest fibres and cobwebs ; 

 hail', fine grass, pieces of decayed wood, lichens, rags, thorns, Ac., 

 are all pressed into the service. The body of the nest is oval, 

 generally, with all sorts of little pendent pieces of wood, &c., 

 hanging bdow, as ornaments apparently, while the apex of the 

 oval is prolonged into a cone meeting the point of support. A 

 little above the centre of the oval, a .small circular aperture is 

 worked, and just above it a projecting cornice, 1 to 1| inch wide, 

 is extended ; then on the opposite side of the oval, the wall of the 

 nest, which is ready some days before the eggs are laid, is pushed 

 out or bulged out a little so as to give room i'or the sitting bird's 

 tail. The bulging-out of the back of the nest is one of the last 

 portions of the work, and the female may be seen going in and out 

 trying the fit, over and over again. When sitting, the little head 

 is just peeping out of the hole under the awning. I remember in 

 February 1867 seeing a nest suspended to a punkah cane which 

 was stretched across Brooks' verandah at Etawah. This nest was 

 founded on two or three narrow strips of gun-rag, which had been 

 left hanging across the cane, black, and smelling of gunpowder. 

 Yet with these unpromising materials and plenty of silky grass, 

 &c., it made a pretty little pendent home. 



The normal number of the eggs is certainly two, but three are 

 said to be sometimes met with ; indeed I have a note of a nest 

 taken on the 4th April by Mr. Adam which contained this number ; 

 still, out of more than fifty nests which I have myself examined, 

 none contained more than two. 



As regards the portico, this, though general, is not universal, 

 and I have seen many nests in which it was entirely wanting. 

 A propos of this, and of the nidification of this species generally, 

 Mr. F. E. Blewitt, detailing his experiences in Jhansie and Saugor, 

 sends me the following remarks : 



" The breeding commences about the middle of May and ends 

 about the middle of August. The nests I always obtained on 

 thorny trees, principally on small keekur and plum. The nest is 

 in form what may, for want of a better term, be called gourd - 

 shaped, with a neck more or less longish. In the exterior con- 

 struction of the nest, brown-looking chips of some kind of bark, 



