

these were of a different species ; but on my return to Praslin and Mahe, and shooting several 

 specimens, I found that all the males had then assumed their full plumage, which they evidently 

 had not done when I shot my first specimen on the 25th January. The axillary tufts, so far as 

 my experience goes, are not visible in the living bird, the feathers of the breast covering them 

 entirely ; and I never observed them as Mr. Tristram did those of the allied species, N. osea 

 (Ibis, 1865, p. 74), when the bird was singing. In habits the Nectarinice resemble the Certhiolcs 

 more than any other group with which I am acquainted — always restless, hanging head down- 

 wards to get at an insect on the under surface of a leaf, then flying off to a flower (not darting 

 like a Humming-bird), and back again to the same tree. The male constantly sings from the 

 top of a tree or from a dead and exposed branch. The song is hurried, but not unlike that of a 

 Goldfinch. The ordinary call is one note quickly repeated three or four times. Mr. Nevill had 

 two nests brought to him — one containing a young one almost fully fledged, the other an egg ; 

 the nests were exactly like others of the family which have been described (Ibis, 1863, p. 302, 

 and 1865, p. 76). The egg is greenish white, freckled, suffused, and blotched with umber-brown 

 chiefly at the larger end. It is 075 inch in length, and 041 in breadth." 



In a paper by the same author in the ' Proceedings ' for the same year, Nectarinia seychel- 

 lensis and N. dussumieri were entered as distinct species: this, I am informed, was a printer's 

 error. 



