Dr. Jerdon says:—­“A nest was once brought me which was declared to belong to this species; it was a very small neat fabric, of ordinary shape, made with moss and grass, and contained three small pure white eggs.  The rarity of the bird makes me doubt if the nest really belonged to it.”

The eggs are tiny little elongated ovals, pure white, and absolutely glossless.

Two sent me by Mr. Gammie measure 0.58 by 0.42 and 0.57 by 0.43.

226.  Zosterops palpebrosa (Temm.). The Indian White-eye.

Zosterops palpebrosus (Temm.), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 265; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 631.

The Indian White-eye, or White-eyed Tit as Jerdon terms it, breeds almost throughout the Indian Empire, sparingly in the hotter and more arid plains, abundantly in the Nilghiris and other ranges of the Peninsula to their very summits, and in the Himalayas to an elevation of 5000 or 6000 feet.

The breeding-season extends in different localities from January to September, but I think that everywhere April is the month in which most eggs are to be met with.

Sometimes they have two broods; whether this is always the case I do not know.

The nest is placed almost indifferently at any elevation.  I have taken one from amongst the topmost twigs of a huge mohwa tree (Bassia latifolia) fully 60 feet high, and I have found them in a tiny bush not a foot off the soil.  Still I think that perhaps the majority build at low elevations, say between 2 and 6 feet from the ground.

The nest is always a soft, delicate little cup, sometimes very shallow, sometimes very deep, as a rule suspended between two twigs like a miniature Oriole’s nest, but on rare occasions propped in a fork.  The nest varies much in size and in the materials with which it is composed.

Pine grass and roots, tow, and a variety of vegetable fibres, thread, floss silk, and cobwebs are all made use of to bind the little nest together and attach it to the twigs whence it depends.  Grass again, moss, vegetable fibre, seed-down, silk, cotton, lichen, roots and the like are used in the body of the nest, which is lined with silky down, hair, moss, and fern-roots, or even silk, while at times tiny silvery cocoons or scraps of rich-coloured lichen are affixed as ornaments to the exterior.

One nest before me is a very perfect and deep cup, hung between two twigs of a mohwa tree and almost entirely hidden by the surrounding leaves.  The exterior diameter of the nest is 21/2 inches, and the depth 2 inches.  The egg-cavity measures scarcely more than 11/2 inch across and very nearly as much in depth.  It is composed of very fine grass-stems and is thinly coated exteriorly with cobwebs, by which also it is firmly secured to the suspending twigs, and externally numerous small cocoons and sundry pieces of vegetable down are plastered on to the nest.  Another nest, hung between two slender twigs of a