92 PSITTACID^E. 



the hole was lined or not. It is curious that the bills of all the 

 young of these species that I examined were quite red, both upper 

 and lower mandibles ; the adult females always have the bills 

 black. Can it be that the bills turn from red in the young females 

 to black in the adult females ? In P. fasciatus the young males 

 have the upper mandible black, turning to red as they become 

 adult. The young of P. nicobaricus and P. tytleri that I examined 

 may have been all males ; but this I think was not likely. I must 

 have seen during my stay at the Andamans and Nicobars at least 

 thirty young birds of these species, of all sexes, either with con- 

 victs or in the Nicobarese huts, and yet I never saw a young one 

 that could not fly that had a black upper or lower mandible. The 

 only very young one that I actually dissected was a male." 



Loriculus vernalis (Sparrm.). The Indian Loriquet. 



Loriculus vernalis (Sparrm.\ Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 265 ; Hume, Rough 

 Draft N. $ E. no. 153. 



The Indian Loriquet breeds in the Terai below Darjeeling, the 

 Bhootan Dooars, Assam, Eastern Bengal, Burma, and the Anda- 

 mans. It lays from three to five eggs, from March to May, in 

 holes and hollows of trees without any nest. 



Mr. Davisonsays: "On the 19th April, while returning to 

 B,oss from Port Mouat, a Burman convict, who was with me, saw 

 a bird of this species fly into a hole in the branch of a forest tree 

 growing by the road-side. He called my attention to this, and I 

 sent him up the tree. On his climbing up, he found the bird (which 

 he caught and brought down with him) sitting on three round 

 white eggs. The hole was about 20 feet from the ground, and 

 contained no lining or attempt at a nest, the eggs being laid on 

 some soft black earthy -looking powder that lay at the bottom of 

 the hole, and which had evidently fallen from the top and sides of 

 the hole. The hole, which w 7 as a natural one, not excavated by the 

 bird, was moderately large, but not quite large enough to admit 

 the convict's hand without a little cutting away at its lower edge." 



The eggs above referred to are very broad and obtuse-ended 

 ovals, in colour dirty-white, and entirely glossless. They vary 

 from O7 to O75 iuch in length, and from O58 to 0-6 inch in 

 breadth. 



Mr. T. W. Bourdillon writes from Travancore : " Last Monday 

 (15th March), while watching the nest of our common Woodpecker, 

 which unfortunately was not discovered until it contained young 

 birds, I saw a Loriquet (L. vernalis} fly out of a hole in a stump. 

 The stump was about 15 feet high, and was hollowed out for about 

 the depth of a foot ; this hollow was protected by a thick jungle 

 creeper, under which the bird found room to pass in and out. 

 Investigation showed that the nest was composed of a very few 

 dry leaves at the bottom of the cavity, and that it contained three 

 very hard-set, glossy, white eggs. This nest was at an elevation 



