THE WHITE-HEADED MANNIKIN. 245 



They are great favourites, more for their gentleness and pretty manners 

 than for their weak voice. I received lately from Sumatra four little 

 pairs, with their nests and eggs, and a fifth nest was already to be 

 found in Thienemann's collection. The long melon-shaped nest is 

 built between reeds and sedges ; it has an oval opening of 5 cents, in 

 diameter. It is composed of grasses of the millet species, loosely and 

 untidily woven together, and wound round outside with a quantity of 

 narrow and broad blades of grass, and thickly lined again inside with 

 very fine silky-haired grasses twined together. The two or three eggs 

 are dull white." 



My own opinion, based upon two or three pairs which I have had 

 from time to time, is that among such clumsy awkward- looking birds 

 as the typical Mannikins (by which I more particularly mean the 

 species of the genus Munia}, the White-headed birds are about the 

 least interesting ; but as regards their longevity, let them once 

 become thoroughly acclimatized and there is no knowing how many 

 years they may live ; provided that their owner is on the look out 

 to release them and cut their curly claws, whenever they chance 

 to get hung up in the wire of the aviary : for it is one of the 

 peculiarities of the species of Munia, that their claws seem to grow in 

 captivity far more rapidly than they can wear them down ; so that the 

 birds are often found hanging by them to the wire-netting of an aviary 

 and vainly struggling to release themselves. 



The male of my last pair of Munia maja died at the age of (at 

 least) seventeen years, and the hen a year later ; they had been in the 

 possession of the gentleman who sold them to me for ten years, before 

 I bought them, and the hen died seven years later : whether the pair 

 was more than a year old when purchased, we do not know ; but both 

 birds were in adult plumage. 



As regards breeding in captivity, possibly a single pair in a large 

 flight- cage would do so without trouble ; even in a large aviary, with 

 many other birds, they readily build in a cigar-box and lay, but my 

 hens never succeeded in hatching any of their eggs ; my last pair on 

 one occasion exchanged partners with a pair of Black-heads, and all 

 four busied themselves in the construction of a single nest ; but I 

 think they interfered with one another, for the eggs got kicked down 

 among the material forming the sides of the nest, and there I found 

 them, dried up, when I cleaned out the box a month or so later. 



Dr. Russ says : " The pairs which existed in my bird- room 

 inhabited a very thick bush over the stove, at every sound whisked 

 immediately into their lurking place, were often not to be seen through- 



