DICTUM. 275 



and of the same description, being suspended by spider's web 

 from a bough ; but it is a good deal smaller, rather less oval and 

 more round, and the inside more carefully constructed. It is lined 

 with the softest materials, so as to put me much in mind of the 

 cocoon of the tusseh silkworm (Anthercea papJiia) it was so 

 smooth and well made. In length it was 3'5 inches ; in breadth 

 2 inches ; and the circumference 7 inches. Several nests with 

 young ones fully fledged were brought to me about the beginning 

 of April." 



Since the above was written, Mr. B. Aitken has favoured me 

 with the following : " I send a nest and specimens of Diccewn 

 minimum, one of the commonest birds about Bombay and Poona. 

 Its favourite food is the ripe berry of the common parasite 

 Loranthus lonyiflorus. Indeed the bird is so plentiful that one or 

 two can be seen at any time wherever there is a bunch of the 

 parasite growing. 



" The nest was taken from a mango-tree in Poona, at a height 

 of about 10 feet from the ground, on the 5th April. It was 

 beautifully placed under a cluster of leaves which hung round it 

 on every side. It contained one wTiit-e egg, smaller than that of 

 the AracJineclitlira asiatica. Unfortunately, I placed the egg on 

 the wall out of the reach of rats, but within reach of a wretched 

 gecko (house lizard), which destroyed it the first night." 



The nest is a beautiful little egg, suspended by the pointed end 

 (which is slightly, and only slightly, extended) from the point of 

 junction of three slender twigs. The length of the nest (exteriorly) 

 is exactly 3 inches, the greatest breadth 1'7 inch. In front, from 

 close to the point of suspension to near the middle of the nest, is 

 an oval aperture, 1'25 inch in length and nearly 1 inch in breadth. 

 The whole nest is composed of the silky pappus of some asteraceous 

 plant, or, it may be, of the silky down of the Calotropis, held to- 

 gether by a slender irregular web-work of vegetable fibres, in 

 which here and there a very few minute fragments of the excreta 

 of caterpillars and tiny pieces of bark and fine grass-stem have 

 been, perhaps accidentally (for they are few and far between), 

 intermingled. The nest varies from O25 to 0*4 inch in thickness ; 

 the thickest portion is just below the lower margin of the aperture, 

 where a great deal more vegetable fibre is used than in any other 

 part, clearly to obviate any danger of the nest being torn at this 

 spot, where the strain on it of the birds going in and out would 

 always be greatest. The whole interior is soft, silky, felted down. 



Mr. J. Davidson, writing of Western Khandesh, says : " A nest 

 just finished was found by me at Pimpalnir in the beginning of 

 February." 



Capt. E. A. Butler writes : 



" Belyaum, 20th May, 1879. I found a nest of TickeU's Flower- 

 pecker. It was in structure, as far as I could see, exactly similar 

 in shape to the nest of Arachnechthra asiatica, but without any 

 portico, and densely lined with some soft silky white vegetable 

 down, and the bird was sitting with her head looking out of the 



18* 



