73G JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XI. 



No. VI -DISTRIBUTION OF THE SLENDER LORIS. 



I write to record the finding of a Slender Loris (Loris gracilis), on these 

 hills at an elevation of about 4,700 feet. A friend wrote the other day to 

 tell me he had found an animal on his Coffee Estate, which no one in these 

 parts had ever seen, and that it was something like my wife's pet Gibbon, 

 Hylobates lar, so I rode over to see it, but found it had died and w»s 

 buried. We bad the body exhumed, and I at once recognized the Slender 

 Loris. My friend had tried feeding it on raw meat and fruit, but it would 

 not eat. According to Jerdon it is common in the forests of the Eastern 

 Ghats, though I see that Blanford, in his Mammalia of British In^ia, says 

 it is found " in lowland forests, not so far as is known, at any consider- 

 able elevation above the sea. 1 ' 



ANGUS M. KINLOCH. 



Kotagiri, Nilgieis, 4i/i March, 1898. 



No. VII.— THE NIDIFICATION OF THE INDIAN LORIKEETS. 



In the " Fauna of British India, Birds," Vol. Ill, p. 262, Mr. Blanford says 

 that Loriculus vernalis lays its eggs " in a hole or hollow of a tree without 

 any nest. 1 ' My limited experience has been different from this. Last year 

 1 recorded in the Journal the taking of three nests of Loriculus indicus in 

 Geylon, in each of which the eggs were deposited on a thick pad of green 

 leaves and halves of leaves torn off lengthwise along the midrib, and to-day 

 I found a nest of Loriculus vernalis, in which the same material was again 

 used to form a layer half an inch in thickness at the bottom of the hollow. 

 I enclose for your inspection a sample of these pieces of leaves, bitten into 

 shape by the birds. 



An old convict jemadar here tells me that he has seen lots of nests of 

 the bird, and that it always makes a nest of green leaves, and as this has been 

 the case in the four nests of the two Indian species which I have taken, I am 

 inclined to think, that this lining of the nest-hole is the rule and not excep- 

 tional, as I imagined when I took my first nest of Loriculus indicus. 



Lorikeets sit close, and when disturbed on their eggs utter a long-drawn 



querulous note like " chee-ee" Perhaps other members of the Society will 



give their experience of the nesting of these birds ; common as the Lori- 



keats are, there is very little on record about thoir nidification. 



A. L, BUTLER. 

 Pout Blaie, 2nd February, 1898. 



No. VIII. PIED VARIETY OF HIRUNDO JAVANICA. 



I shot a very prettily pied specimen of Hirundo ja'vanica here the other 

 day. The head and throat were pure white, and a few blue-black feathers 

 on the crown ; wings with the second, third, fourth and fifth primaries 



