306 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. X, 



All had three eggs. I was deprived of one clutch in a rather peculiar 

 way. I found a nest building, almost on the ground, in long grass. I 

 visited it eight days later and found it replaced by a fresh white ant hill. 

 Kicking it open, I found the ants~ had used the globular mass of grass 

 as a foundation and imbedded the ill-fated nest in a cone of earth 

 2 feet high. 



96. Akippe nlgrifrons^ Blyth, the Ceylon Wren Babbler. — Breeds 

 in the rainy season and up to May. It makes three or four nests 

 before it lays in one, so that they are very common in jungle, though 

 almost always empty. Lays two eggs. 



97. Pellorneum fuscicapillum^ Blyth, the Whistling Quaker 

 Thrush. — Very common, but a fearful little skulk and not easy to 

 shoot, as it flutters off through the dense jungle underwood directly it 

 is approached. Colonel Legge recognized it as a common bird by the 

 frequency with which he heard its whistle, which he describes exactly 

 by the words " to meet you," and I believe it is even more numerous 

 than an acquaintance with its whistle would lead one to believe, as, 

 though sometimes it whistles incessantly, I have several times seen three 

 or four pairs in a day without hearing its note once. A male shot on 

 April 4th was in a state of breeding. This, bird when shot was cling- 

 ing to a perpendicular rock like a Pomatorhinus. 



98. Pyctorhis nasalisj Legge, the Black-billed Babbler.- — Common. 

 Breeds in May. Builds a cup-shaped nest between stems of maana 

 grass. Lays three eggs, short and broad in shape, white with large 

 blotches of sienna-brown. 



99. Orthotomus sutorius^ Forster, the Indian Tailor-bird. — Com- 

 mon. I have seen its nest in a single leaf of a kind of vegetable- 

 marrow, between two leaves of a large-leaved jat of tea plant, between 

 two coffee leaves, and between quite a dozen leaves of cinchona — the 

 broad-leaved succiruhra variety, in which case the leaves were about 

 four-deep all round the nest. This was at 5,500 feet in the wet 

 weather, so I suppose the object was shelter against rain and wind. 



lUO. Prinia socicdisj Legge, the Ashy Wren Warbler. — Very 

 common. Breeds here from January to June. Although Colonel 

 Legge says that " nothing can be more un-tailur-bird-like than the 

 nest which it builds in Ceylon," and proceeds to describe the nest as 

 " a shapeless ball of guinea-grass roots throum as it were between the 



