The nest sent me by Mr. Bourdillon is a very flimsy affair, reminding one much of the nest of Graucalus macii and not in the smallest degree of that of an Oriole.  A mere pad, some 4 inches in diameter, composed of very thin twigs or dry flower-stalks with a couple of dead leaves intermingled, and an external coating of green moss.

Major C.T.  Bingham has favoured me with the following notes from Tenasserim:—­“At the sources of the Winsaw stream, a feeder of the Thoungyeen river, on the 30th April I found a nest of this bird, a mere irregularly roundish pad of moss with very little depression in the centre, containing two fresh eggs, and placed 12 feet or so above the ground in the fork of an evergreen sapling.  The eggs measure 1.18 x 0.86 and 1.19 x 0.86 respectively, and are so thickly spotted and blotched with brown as to show very little of the ground-colour, which latter, however, appears to be of a greenish white.

“On the 11th April I was slowly clambering along a very steep hill-side overlooking the Queebaw choung, a small tributary of the Meplay stream, when from a tree whose crown was below my feet I startled a female Irena puella off her nest.  I could see the nest and that it contained two eggs, so I shot the female, who had taken to a tree a little above me.  On getting the nest down, I found it a poor affair of little twigs, with a superstructure of moss, shaped into a shallow saucer, on which reposed two eggs, large for the size of the bird, of a dull greenish white, much dashed, speckled, and spotted with brown.  They were so hard-set that I only managed to save one, which measured 1.09 by 0.77 inch.”

Mr. Davison writes:—­“At Kussoom, in some moderately thin tree-jungle I found the nest of Irena puella.  The nest was placed in the fork of a sapling some 12 feet from the ground.  The nest externally was composed of dry twigs, carelessly and irregularly put together.  The egg-cavity was shallow, not more than 1.5 inch at its deepest part, and it was lined with finer twigs, fern-roots, and some yellowish fibre.  The nest contained two fresh eggs.”

Two eggs, taken by Mr. Davison at Kussoom in the north of the Malay Peninsula, to which the Malayan form does not extend, are rather elongated ovals, with a slightly pyriform tendency.  The shell is fine, smooth, and compact, and has a perceptible gloss.  The ground-colour is greenish white; round the large end is a huge, smudgy, irregular zone of reddish brown and inky grey, the one colour predominating in the one egg, the other in the other.  Inside the zone are specks and spots of the same colours, and below the zone streaks and spots of these same colours, thinly set, stretched downwards towards the small end of the egg.

Other eggs subsequently received are very similar to that first sent by Mr. Bourdillon, except that in shape they are more regular ovals, and that the brown markings in some have a reddish and in some a purplish tinge, and that in some eggs the mottings and markings are pretty thick even at the small end.