mango tree, is a shallow cup some 21/2 inches in diameter, and not above an inch in depth externally.  The egg-cavity measures at most 11/2 inch across by three-fourths of an inch in depth.  The nest is composed of fine tow-like vegetable fibres and thread, by which it is attached to the twigs, a little grass-down being blended in the mass, and the cavity being very sparsely lined with very fine grass-stems.  In another nest, somewhat larger than, the last described, the nest is made of moss slightly tacked together with cobwebs and lined with fine grass-fibres.  Another nest, a very regular shallow cup, with an egg-cavity 2 inches in diameter and an inch in depth, is composed almost entirely of the soft silky down of the Calatropis gigantea, rather thickly lined with very fine hair-like grass, and very thinly-coated exteriorly with a little of this same grass, moss, and thread.  Another, with a similar-sized cavity, but nearly three-fourths of an inch thick everywhere, is externally a mass of moss, moss-roots, and very fine lichen, and is lined entirely with very soft and brilliantly white satin-like vegetable down.  Another, with about the same-sized cavity, but the walls of which are scarcely one-fourth of an inch in thickness, is composed entirely of this satiny down, thinly coated exteriorly and interiorly with excessively fine moss-roots (roots so fine that most of them are much thinner than human hair); a few black horsehairs, which look coarse and thick beside the other materials of the nest, are twisted round and round in the interior of the egg-cavity.  Other nests might be made entirely of tow, so far as their appearance goes; and in fact with a very large series before me, no two seem, to be constructed of the same materials.

I have nests before me now, taken in September, March, June, and August, all of which when found contained eggs.

Two is certainly the normal number of the eggs; about one fifth of the nests I have seen contained three, and once only I found four.

From Murree Colonel C.H.T.  Marshall informs us that he took the eggs in June at an elevation of about 6000 feet.

Colonel G.F.L.  Marshall says:—­“I have taken eggs of this species at Cawnpore in the middle of June.  I found six nests, five of which were in neem-trees.  I also found the nest in Naini Tal at 7000 feet above the sea, with young in the middle of June; one only of all the nests I have seen was lined, and that was lined with feathers:  they were, as a rule, about eight feet from the ground, but one was nearly forty feet up.”

Capt.  Hutton gives a very full account of the nidification of this species.  He says:—­“These beautiful little birds are exceedingly common at Mussoorie, at an elevation of about 5000 feet, during summer, but I never saw them much higher.  They arrive from the plains about the middle of April, on the 17th of which month I saw a pair commence building in a thick bush of Hibiscus, and on the 27th