Birds. 8757 



composed of dried grasses, fibres and leaves, cup-shaped, covered with 

 a broad-domed canopy, and lined with feathers and hair. It builds 

 three nests in the course of the season ; laying in the first, seven 

 small round, maroon -coloured eggs ; in the two next, five a-piece, 

 seldom less. The birds of the year are olive-green on the upper parts, 

 with none of the blackish gray on the crown that adorns the adult 

 bird. In the moult of the following spring the transformation into the 

 adult plumage is complete. 



65. Cisticola schcenicola, Bp. 



66. C. volitans, Swinhoe, Jonrn. N. China Branch As. Soc. Shang. 

 1858. In habits it much resembles the common species, dropping, 

 when pursued, into the thickest grass, about the roots of which it 

 creeps, and whence it is hard to flush it. It frequently perches on the 

 summit of grass-stalks, and is then at once recognizable by its white 

 head. It has a short flitting flight, and frequently springs into the air 

 some twenty or thirty feet, uttering its well-marked notes, tee-tee- 

 teup-teup. In June, 1857, when circumnavigating Formosa in H.M.S. 

 1 Inflexible,' I first made the acquaintance of this species at Sawo, and 

 afterwards at Kelung. It was then its breeding-season, and the num- 

 bers that abounded about the long grass were uncommonly lively ; but 

 its very diminutive size and activity precluded my obtaining more 

 than one specimen of it. This I described the same year, at a meeting 

 of the North China Branch of the Asiatic Society, under the above 

 name. In Tamsuy I found it very locally distributed, and much 

 rarer than C. cursitans. It was only after great difficulty that, through 

 the aid of my constable, I was enabled to add another example 

 to my collection, and the high and remote localities it inhabited pre- 

 vented my obtaining any facts as to its nesting or other habits. 

 1 think I am right in laying down its habitat in Formosa as restricted 

 to the hills on the eastern and northern portion of the island, Tamsuy 

 being probably its most southerly range on the western side. 



67. Calamoherpe orientalis, Bp. Consp. p. 285. 



68. C. canturians. 



69. C. minuta. 



70. Phyllopneuste fuscata. 



71. P. coronata. 



72. P. sylvicultrix. 



73. Reguloides superciliosus, Gmel. I always understood this spe- 

 cies, which is identical with Mr. Gould's Dalmatian goldcrest, to be 

 the Motacilla proregulus of Pallas, until the other day, at Leyden, 

 Prof. Schlegel told me that he thought Pallas's description applied 



