Miss Cockburn sends me a nest of this species which she found on the 17th June amongst reeds on the edge of a stream, about 2 or 3 feet above the water’s edge.  It appears to have been a globular mass very loosely put together, of broad reed-leaves, between 3 or 4 inches in diameter, and with a central unlined cavity.

Mr. Iver Macpherson, writing from Mysore, says:—­“I have only met with this bird in heavy bamboo-forest, and have only found two nests, viz., on the 25th May and 2nd July, 1879.  Both nests were fixed low down (2 to 3 feet) in bamboo-clumps, and each contained two eggs, which, for the size of the bird, I considered very large.  Nest globular, and very loosely constructed of bamboo-leaves and blades of grass.”

An egg sent me from Coonoor by Mr. Wait is a moderately broad, very regular oval, only slightly compressed towards the smaller end.  The shell is very fine and satiny, but has only a slight gloss.  The ground-colour is white or slightly greyish white, and towards the large end it is profusely speckled with minute dots of brownish and purplish red, a few specks of the same colour being scattered about the rest of the surface of the eggs.

Another egg sent me from Kotagherry by Miss Cockburn exactly corresponds with the above description.

Both are precisely the same in size, and measure 0.75 by 0.55.  Other eggs measure from 0.75 to 0.79 in length by 0.53 to 0.58 in breadth[A].

[Footnote A:  Mr. T. Fulton Bourdillon (S.F. ix, p. 300) gives an interesting account of the nest and eggs of a species of Rhopocichla, which he failed to identify satisfactorily.  It may have been R. atriceps or R. bourdilloni.  Most probably, judging from the locality, it was the latter.  As, however, there is a doubt about it, I do not insert the note.—­ED.]

167.  Rhopocichla nigrifrons (Bl.). The Black-fronted Babbler.

Alcippe nigrifrons, Bl., Hume, cat. no. 390 ter.

Colonel Legge writes regarding the nidification of the Black-fronted Babbler in Ceylon:—­“After finding hundreds of the curious dry-leaf structures, mentioned in ‘The Ibis,’ 1874, p. 19, entirely void of contents, and having come almost to the conclusion that they were built as roosting-places, I at last came on a newly-constructed one containing two eggs, on the 5th of January last; the bird was in the nest at the time, so that my identification of the eggs was certain.  The nest of this Babbler is generally placed in a bramble or straggling piece of undergrowth near a path in the jungle or other open spot; it is about 3 or 4 feet from the ground, and is entirely made of dead leaves and a few twigs; the leaves are laid one over another horizontally, forming a smooth bottom or interior.  In external form it is a shapeless ball about 8 or 10 inches in diameter, and has an unfinished opening at the side.  The birds build with astonishing quickness, picking up the leaves