612 
Mr. G. L. Bates on the 
greyish-white, like the plumage of the adult. No. 3456, a 
younger bird with a short bill, has the head, throat, and 
neck dark olive-brown, but some yellow feathers appearing 
on the throat and sides of the head belong to the plumage 
corresponding to No. 3480. Birds in this intermediate 
plumage have evidently been mistaken for adult females 
(c/. Shelley, Monogr. Nect. plate 96). 
All the specimens mentioned above were caught in 
February and the beginning of March by means of snares 
fixed on flowering shrubs. At most times this species seems 
to be rare. 
Cisticola erythrops. [Tinkwat.] (Plate XII. figs. 14, 
and 18-23, eggs.) (Text-fig. 18, p. 613.) 
Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 317; Bates, Ibis, 1907, p. 67. 
Nos. 3116, 3890, and 4442 were immature birds, and 
No. 4527 was young with the plumage half-grown ; these 
were all without the rusty brown colouring of the plumage 
about the head, and had the lores and sides of the head 
greyish-wliite. The inside of the mouth and tongue were 
orange-coloured, and the tongue had a pair of lanceolate 
black spots near the base at the edges. The tongue-spots 
do not entirely disappear when birds of this species become 
adult. In text-fig. 18, fig. A (p. 613) represents the tongue 
of a large nestling and B that of an adult bird. These 
figures and all those of birds' tongues were drawn from 
specimens preserved in spirit. 
A large number of nests of the Tinkwat have been brought 
to me by boys, who find them in easily accessible bushes at 
the edges of the gardens, and so catch the sitting hen-birds 
in their nests after dark in the evening. I have already 
described these ingenious nests, but will here add that the 
felt-like lining of brown pappus varies in thickness, and is 
found to be thin and scanty when the eggs are fresh, and 
thick when they are nearly ready to hatch or when the 
nest contains nestlings. It is evident that the bird continues 
to line the nest after sitting has begun. The number of eggs 
is sometimes three, but more often two. About forty eggs 
