THE BIRDS OF NORTH CACHAR, 186 
now in his collection. The remarks on nidification made on P. mandelli 
would equally apply to this bird. 
(55) P. patustreE.—The Marsh Spotted Babbler. 
Oates, No. 146; Hume, No. 399 Quat. 
A rare bird here, and, unlike the other members “of the genus, never 
found to my knowledge outside grass land. I have never noticed it 
near swamps or marshy land, as its name would seem to infer it should 
be found. 
The nests and eggs are undistinguishable from those of P. rujiceps or 
P. mandelliz, but the latter are smaller, averaging about 87" by °64". 
(56) P. 1anorum.—The Assam Babbler. 
Oates, No. 148 ; Hume, No. 899 Ter A. 
I reproduce in full my notes from the Aszan, which give all the infor- 
mation I have collected concerning this little-known bird. 
“ Nipirication.—The nests of this bird differ in one important re- 
spect from those of the other members of the genus in that, as far as I 
know, it is never found on the ground. It is of course of much the same 
character, being either shaped like a very deep cup, one side being more 
or less prolonged and sometimes bent over, or it is a perfectly globular- 
shaped nest. The entrance is generally high up on one side about an inch 
from the top, sometimes it is about the centre, and rarely quite low down-— 
so low as to allow the eggs to be seen from some distance away when 
the nest is not well concealed or when the covering branches have been 
disturbed. The materials used may be of almost any kind of grass or 
bamboo leaves, and it is lined only with grass. From its position it is 
naturally rather more compactly built than the nest of those species 
which build theirs on the ground, but it is also sometimes a good deal 
neater than nests placed in a similiar position and of the same type. I 
haye seen one or two which were made of very fine grasses which were 
so neatly and strongly built that I at first sight mistook them for the 
nests of the Himalayan Munia. The majority of the nests I have per- 
sonally found were taken from the dense masses of twigs growing on 
the lower parts of clumps of the small clump bamboo and were placed 
at heights varying from two to four feet from the ground, rarely higher 
than the last-mentioned height and, nearly equally as rarely, lower than 
4 : 
