WARBLER. 103 



orange, or flame-colour ; eyes black ; tongue furnished with two 

 hairs at the end ; belly pale grey. 



Inhabits the palm trees of Java. — Dr. Sparrman says, there are 

 seven prime quills, nine secondaries, and ten tail feathers, but in the 

 Warbler Genus we find in general not fewer than twelve. 



105 —THORACIC WARBLER. 



Le Plastron noir, Levail. Afr. iii. 96. pi. 123. f. 12. 



Motacilla thoracica, Thoracic Warbler, Nat. Misc. pi. 969. Shaw's Zool. x. 562, 



SIZE of the lesser Pettichaps. Bill black ; plumage above olive- 

 grey ; eye brown, placed in a patch of black ; on the breast a broad 

 crescent of black; the chin and throat within this, white; belly and 

 vent yellowish white ; quills dusky, edged with pale olive ; the two 

 middle tail feathers the same, the others mostly white; beneath 

 wholly white ; shape of the tail rounded ; legs yellowish. 



The female is a trifle smaller, has no collar; and the male appears 

 like the female till the second moult. Both sexes remain together 

 at all times, and the song is agreeable, especially in the warmer 

 season. In November and December the female makes the nest, 

 among the low bushes or plants, and lays six rufous white eggs. 

 This is one of the nests in which the Cuckow chuses to deposit her 

 eggs. M. Levaillant found in one of them a young of the Noisy 

 Species, which was then the size of a Blackbird, and so large, as to 

 distend and to damage the nest : it had the mouth ever open for food, 

 which the foster parents, with great difficulty, supplied it with ; in 

 about a week it became too large for the nest to contain it, when it 

 fixed itself on a branch of Mimosa, and when M. L. left the spot, 

 the old birds still continued to feed it. 



This bird is common in the interior of the Cape of Good Hope, 

 from the River of Elephants to the Tropics, but very rare towards 



