104 
POPULAR HISTORY OP BIEDS. 
were surprised to find them so contrary to the habits of the 
rest of the genus with which we are acquainted^ breeding 
in society. Their nests were at various heights above the 
ground, from four to thirty or forty feet or upwards, and 
mixed with old ones of the preceding summer ; they were 
for the most part placed against the trunk of the spruce fir- 
tree ; some were however at a considerable distance from it, 
towards the smaller end of the thicker branches. They re- 
semble most nearly those of the ring-ouzel ; the outside is 
composed of sticks and coarse grass and weeds gathered wet, 
matted together with a small quantity of clay, and lined with 
a thick bed of fine dry grass"^."*^ 
Mr. Hewitson adds that two hundred nests or upwards 
may be found within a small circuit of the forest. 
Dr. Horsfield, in his zoological researches in Java, met 
wdth a fine song-bird on Mount Prahu, at an elevation of 
7000 feet above the sea. He says: — ^^It utters, almost 
without interruption, a varied song. Its common note is a 
quickly-reiterated babbling, resembling that of the Curnica 
garrula and other birds of this family ; it has also a pro- 
tracted plaintive note ; but it sometimes rises to higher and 
melodious warblings, which, in the general silence of these 
* Hewitson's 'British Eggs/ vol. i. p. 58. 
