MACHLOLOPHUS. 37 



tinge, and sparingly sprinkled with lilac spots or specks, and 

 having a well-defined lilac ring at the larger end." 



From Nynee Tal, Colonel Gr. P. L. Marshall writes : — " This species 

 makes a beautifully neat nest of fine moss and lichens, globular, 

 with side entrance, and thickly lined with soft feathers. A nest 

 found on Cheena, above Nynee Tal, on the 24th May, 1873, at an 

 elevation of about 7000 feet, was wedged into a fork at the end of 

 a bough of a cypress tree, about 10 feet from the ground, the 

 entrance turned inwards towards the trunk of the tree. It con- 

 tained one tiny egg, white, with a dark cloudy zone round the 

 larger end. 



" About the 10th ' of May, at Naini Tal, I was watching one of 

 these little birds, which kept hanging about a small rhododendron 

 stump about 2 feet high, with very few leaves on it, but I could 

 see no nest. A few days later I saw the bird carry a big cater- 

 pillar to the same stump and come away shortly without it ; so I 

 looked more closely and found the nest, containing nearly full- 

 fledged young, so beautifully wedged into the stump that it ap- 

 peared to be part of it, and nothing but the tiny circular entrance 

 revealed that the nest was there. It was the best-concealed nest 

 for that style of position that I have ever seen." 



These tiny eggs, almost smaller than those of any European 

 bird that I know, are broad ovals, sometimes almost globular, but 

 generally somewhat compressed towards one end, so as to assume 

 something of a pyrif orm shape. They are almost entirely glossless, 

 have a pinkish or at times creamy-white ground, and exhibit a 

 conspicuous reddish or purple zone towards the large end, com- 

 posed of multitudes of minute spots almost confluent, and inter- 

 spaced with a purplish cloud. Faint traces of similar excessively 

 minute purple or red points extend more or less above and below 

 the zone. The eggs vary from - 53 to 0'58 in length, and from 

 0-43 to 0*46 in breadth ; but the average of twenty-five is 0-56 

 nearly by 0-45 nearly. 



41. Machlolophns spilonotus (Bl.). The Blaek-spotted Yellow Tit. 

 Machlolophus spilonotus (Bl.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 281. 



Mr. Mandelli found a nest of this species at Lebong in Sikhim on 

 the 15th June in a hole in a dead tree, about 5 feet from the ground. 

 The nest was a mere pad of the soft fur of some animal, in which a 

 little of the brown silky down from fern-stems and a little moss 

 was intermingled. It contained three hard-set eggs. 



One of these eggs is a very regular oval, scarcely, if at all, 

 pointed towards the lesser end ; the ground-colour is a pure dead 

 white, and the markings, spots, and specks of pale reddish brown, 

 and underlying spots of pale purple, are evenly scattered all over 

 the egg ; it measures 0-78 by 0-55. 



