914 NOVELTIES. 
and. on his experience of seeing some blinded Shell-eaters feeding, 
vide “ Birds of India,” Vol. ITI. 
All I can say is that I have watched the birds, frequently and 
carefully, feeding both in the fields, and in confinement, and 
invariably seen them proceed thus: on finding a large shell— 
some species of Ampularia, on which they chiefly feed—they 
take it to some dry spot, and there holding it firmly under one 
foot, break a hole by repeated blows from the point of the bill, 
into one of the upper convolutions of the shell, dragging out the 
fish piece-meal. The smaller shells, and this is what I believe 
causes the attrition, are crushed between the powerful mandibles 
and swallowed by repeated jerks of the head. 
I may add that the young are fed with shell-fish after extrac- 
tion from the shell,—this I had ample means of proving by 
watching the old birds. 
In their wild state the birds haunt edges of jheels, but by 
preference rice fields, and rarely banks of rivers, feeding as 
above stated almost exclusively on shell-fish, with occasionally 
a frog or a fish, for I have found the remains of these in the 
stomachs of some I have shot. In confinement I have found 
that both old and young die, if kept long on an exclusively 
fish diet. 
They are silent birds generally, but sometimes at night utter 
a curious laughing chattering noise with frequent clatterings 
of the bill. 
In the breeding season they are more gregarious than at 
other times, but even in the cold season they are seldom seen 
singly. 
c.f: 
Alovelties 7 
Criniger theiodes, Sp. Nov. 
Above hair brown, every feather broadly margined with dark olive green ; 
lower surface sulphur yellow, brightest on the middle of abdomen, 
vent, and lower tail-coverts, and strongly suffused with olive on the 
breast, sides, and flanks ; wing, 3:25 to 3°40. 
This species, which was met with by Mr. Davison only in the 
forests of Johore, about 30 miles north of Singapore, belongs 
possibly to the same minimum sub-division as plwmosus, Blyth, 
brunneus, Blyth, and pusillus, Salvadori ; but is more brightly 
colored than any of these. It is excessively difficult, I find, 
to make certain what species are indicated by the names given 
by some of the earlier writers; but after consulting such 
