152 CRATBR0P0D1M. 



but I have seen more than fifty, and, so far as I am concerned, I 

 have no hesitation in asserting that, as in the case of the birds so 

 in that of their nests and eggs, no constant differences can be 

 detected if only sufficiently large series are compared. 



The birds build usually on the upper surface of a horizontal 

 bough, at a height of from ] to 25 feet from the ground. Some- 

 times, when the bough is more or less slanting, the nest assumes 

 somewhat more of a pocket-shape. Occasionally it is built between 

 three or four slender twigs, forming an upright fork ; but this is 

 quite exceptional. 



As a rule nests of the Iora very closely resemble those of Leu- 

 cocerca, so much so that when I sent a beautiful photograph of a 

 nest, which I had myself watched building, of the latter species to 

 Mr. Blyth, he unhesitatingly pronounced it to be a nest of the former. 

 There is, however, a certain amount of difference ; the Iora's nests 

 are looser and somewhat less compact andfirm. My experience does 

 not confirm Mr. Brooks's remarks (vide infra) that they are usually 

 shallower ; on the contrary all those now before me are, as indeed 

 all the many I can remember to have seen were, deep, thin-walled 

 cups, which had been placed on more or less horizontal branches, 

 not uncommonly where some upright-growing twig afforded the 

 nest additional security. The egg-cavity averages about 2 inches 

 in diameter, and varies from an inch to 1| inch in depth ; the walls, 

 composed of vegetable fibres, and varying in different specimens 

 from only one eighth to three eighths of an inch in thickness, are 

 everywhere thickly coated externally with cobwebs, by which also 

 the nest is firmly attached to the branch on which it is seated, as 

 well as, where such adjoin the nest, to any little twig springing 

 from that branch. Interiorly they are more or less neatly lined 

 with very fine grass-stems. The bottom of the nest in its thinnest 

 part is rarely above one eighth of an inch in thickness, but running, 

 as it so often does, down the curving sides of the branch, it 

 becomes a good deal thicker, and where placed on a small branch, 

 say not exceeding an inch in diameter, the lateral portions of the 

 bottom of the nest are sometimes more than half an inch in 

 thickness. 



One nest which I obtained recently in the Botanical Gardens 

 at Calcutta was built in an upright fork of four slender twigs ; and 

 in this case the bottom of the nest was obtusely conical, and at its 

 deepest point may have been nearly an inch in depth. I have never 

 seen a similar nest. 



The eggs are normally three in number, but I have at times 

 found only two, and these more or less incubated. 



Mr. Brooks, writing of a nest he took in the Mirzapoor District, 

 says : — " Did you ever get particulars of the nest of Iora zeylonica on 

 the forked branch of a mango-tree 12 or 14 feet from the ground ? 

 Nest composed of the same materials as that of Leucocerea albi- 

 frontata, but not quite so neat and much more shallow; eggs 

 salmon-coloured and spotted with pale reddish brown, intermixed 

 with a few larger dashes of purple-grey. The bird lays in July ; 



