discovered by an active huntsman of ours, but unfortunately, not at the breeding time, and 
illness prevented us from visiting them subsequently, so that we never obtained their eggs. 
The position selected, he informed us, for the entrance, was on the under side of a bough 
about fifteen inches in girth near the top of the tree. The hole was circular, and about ten 
inches in depth. 
We are indebted to Captain Bailey R.E., who was for a long time encamped at this 
place, for a number of skins of this, as well as many other birds, all carefully labelled with 
colours and dimensions, and not being a collector himself, the amount of labour and trouble 
he took with them was the more gratifying. His observations accord well with those given 
by Mr. B. H. Hodgson, and only those Avho have tried it, can know the strength of purpose 
it requires to sit down and carefully ticket all the birds after a successful, though 
fatiguing days shooting, or appreciate the loathing of ornithology that fills the mind when, 
with the thermometer at 95°, a ghastly array of dissected stomachs, are brought in for 
inspection late in the evening, and the nerves have to be braced, and the nose held, while 
the necessary particulars are being noted. It is then, indeed, that the dark side of the 
pursuit of science is discovered, and the true metal of the naturalist tested. 
Captain Tickell’s often quoted account of the nest of this species is, we are convinced, 
altogether erroneous. No bird with any analogy to the Barbets has been known to build 
a nest at all, much less to make a hemispherical one of grass with the blossoms plastered 
on outside. The account sounds more like that of the nest of a Centropus but the 
dimensions are too small. 
Figures of this bird have been given in Le Yaillants “Barbus” (l.c.) and in Vieillot’s 
“ Galerie des Oiseaux,” t. 35, but in no later work that we are aware of. Our plate is taken 
from specimens obtained by ourselves at Kalsi, and now in our own collection ; it represents a 
male and female and nest ; the position of the latter is erroneous, as the entrance should be 
on the under side of the bough. 
