264 NECTARINIIDJE. 



or silky vegetable down, and the exterior profusely ornamented 

 with tiny dry flower-buds, scraps of white lichen, dry white leaves, 

 glistening straw, and anything else that happens to be handy, and 

 that appears to have attracted the little bird's attention in any 

 way. The nests are always hung to some slender twig, over which 

 the upper surface of the nest is firmly worked with fibres and 

 vegetable down. Sometimes long pendants of leaves, lichen, &c. 

 hang down from the nest, making it much longer than I have 

 above described. 



Elsewhere, before I had seen as many nests as I now have, I 

 thus described them : 



" The only two nests that I have seen of this species closely 

 resemble those of A.rachneclithra asiatica. They were in both 

 cases suspended, the one from a babool, the other from a peepul 

 tree. They were long and pear-shaped, with the thickest portion 

 of the pear downwards. On one side, just at the swell, a cut had, 

 as it were, been made, and the cut piece had been pulled up so as 

 to form a sort of projecting portico over the entrance-hole. The 

 total external length of the nest was about 6 inches. The greatest 

 external diameter about 2| inches. The portico projected nearly 

 1 inch. The entrance-hole beneath it was oval, about 1| inch 

 high and J inch broad. Internally the nest was about 2| inches 

 deep below the lower edge of the entrance aperture, and this lower 

 edge, I may here mention, as in the case of the rim of the nests 

 of the Palm-Swift, was very firmly corded and banded, if I may 

 use such an expression, so as to prevent the possibility of the nest 

 being split down at this place. The materials composing the nest 

 were very various. The main fabric of the nest was a tow-like 

 vegetable fibre firmly felted together, and with a good deal of 

 cobweb intermingled. The whole interior of the nest below the 

 level of the lower rim of the entrance aperture was densely felted 

 with the beautiful glossy white down of the seeds of the Asdepias 

 gigantea. Externally, apparently for the sake of ornament, or 

 possibly to render the nest less conspicuous, all kinds of odds and 

 ends, chips of wood, scraps of bark, dry petals of flowers, a little 

 moss, and numerous tiny cocoons, were fastened on with cobwebs." 



According to my experience, the eggs are invariably two in 

 number. Captain Beavan (vide infra) says three, but he is talking 

 of two nests, and I think he means that there were two in one and 

 only one in the other nest. 



Dr. Jerdon states that "it is exceedingly abundant in Madras, 

 more so I think than in Lower Bengal. It may be seen in every 

 garden flitting from flower to flower, and it builds a very neat 

 nest of grass, vegetable fibres, spider's web sometimes, with a hole 

 at the side near the top overshadowed by a canopy of the same 

 materials, and lays usually two eggs of a pale greenish tinge, with 

 small dusky spots." 



Mr. Theobald, writing from Sooramungalum of the Salem Dis- 

 trict, tells me that August is the laying-season there. " The nests 

 are suspended at a moderate height from the ground to the branches 



