576 
DICTUM MINIMUM. 
Nidification . — The breeding-season in the Western Provincej as^well as I can ascertain, is in July and 
August ; but the nests are so rarely found (Mr. MacVicar, of the Survey Department, and a very successful 
egg-hunter, being, I believe, the only person who has discovered it) that it would not be safe, with so little 
evidence in the matter, to restrict the season to any particular month. This gentleman, who found one nest 
in August containing three young birds, described it to me as being a beautiful little cup-shaped structure, 
suspended, about 7 or 8 feet from the ground, to the twig of a Cadju-trcc, constructed of wild cotton, mingled 
with cobwebs and lichens, and about 1^" in interior diameter. Subsequently he writes me of having found 
another, whi(;h was hanging to the branch of a wild cinnamon-bush growing in a fence. This one ivas formed 
outside of “ some soft substance like tow, with a few pieces of bark and some spiders^ webs the inside was 
entirely lined with white ‘ cotton.’ It measured 4 inches in length and SJ in breadth, external dimensions.” 
It contained an egg, on which the bird was sitting when the nest was found, and which is stated to be white, 
speckled with minute brownish specks. In India, Messrs. Beavan and Aitken have both taken the nests and 
eggs, and describe the latter as white. I am, notwithstanding, sure that my informant, who knows the bird 
too well to mistake it, is right in his identification of the speckled egg just noticed. Mr. Hume thus speaks 
of the nest found by Mr. Aitkin, “ It is a beautiful little ^ egg,’ suspended by the pointed end (which is slightly, 
and only slightly, extended) from the point of junction of three slender twigs. The length of the nest is exactly 
,3 inches, the greatest breadth 1-7 inch. In front, from near the point of suspension to the middle of the nest, 
is an oval aperture 1-25 inch in length and nearly 1 inch in breadth. The whole nest is composed of the 
silky pappus of some asteraceous plant, or it may be of the silky down of the Calotropis, held together by a 
slender irregular webwork of vegetable fibres, in which here and there a very few minute fragments of the 
excreta of caterpillars and tiny pieces of bark and fine grass have been, perhaps accidentally, intermingled. 
The whole interior is soft, silky, felted down.” Captain Beavan remarks that three pure white 
eggs brought to him measured 0'6 by 0'4 inch. 
Genus PACHTGLOSSA. 
Bill short and very stout, both high and wide at the base ; culmen curved considerably ; tip 
faintly notched, but not serrated ; gonys deep and curved up to the tip. Nostrils linear, in a 
capacious membrane, and partly protected by a tuft ; gape with minute bristles. Wing long ; 
the 2nd quill the longest, the 1st slightly shorter and subequal to the 3rd, 4th slightly shorter 
than the 1st. Tail short and even. Legs and feet stout; the tarsus covered with obsolete 
transverse scales; anterior toes joined at the base, the outermost syndactyle ; inner toe slightly 
shorter than the outer ; hind toe and claw large. 
