584 ZOSTEEOPS PALPEBEOSA. 



Mr. Ball writes of the pluck which he observed these little birds display in the Satpura hills in attacking 

 the Kose-Finch, a vastly more powerful bird, and driving it away from the flowers of the Mhowa (Bassia lati- 

 folia), which, he remarks, forms a favourite hunting-ground of this " Tit." In the gardens on the Nilghiris, 

 Jerdon says it may be seen clinging to the flower-stalks and " extracting the minute insects that infest flowers, 

 by the pollen of which its forehead is often powdered." 



Nidification. — The White-eye breeds in June, July, and August, attaching its neat little nest to the 

 horizontal fork of a small or moderately-sized tree, sometimes at a height of 20 feet from the ground, or 

 suspending it between the twigs or branches of a small bush at a few feet from the soil. It is a frail but 

 seemingly strong little work, made of fine tendrils of creepers, moss-roots, thin grass-stalks, and a little moss, 

 carefully interwoven, and at the upper edges worked round the supporting twigs ; the exterior is often mixed 

 with pieces of seed-down, cotton, cocoons, &c, some of which substances are generally used for the lining of 

 the interior as well; this is about If inch in diameter and is rather shallow. Mr. Morgan writes that it 

 builds in the south of India a pretty little cup-shaped nest of golden-coloured moss and thistle-down lined with 

 silk-cotton ; he describes the eggs as being two or three in number and of an exceedingly pale blue colour, 

 measuring in length - 71 inch and in breadth - 51. Some that I have examined were pale greenish blue and 

 pointed at the small end. 



In Mr. Hume's ' Nests and Eggs ' will be found much interesting matter concerning the nesting of this 

 White-eye in India, among which Captain Hutton tells us that the little oval cup is so slight and so frail 

 " that it is astonishing the mere weight of the parent does not bring it to the ground ; and yet within it three 

 young ones will often safely outride a gale that will bring the weightier nests of Jays and Thrushes to the 

 ground/' The majority of the nests taken by him were composed of "little bits of green moss, cotton, and 

 seed-down, and the silk of the wild mulberrv-moth torn from the cocoons." 



