nothing particular to do that day, a very rare event in my forest work; I devoted it to a fruitless search for bears.  I had returned tired and rather dispirited, and was moving about among the ruined houses, between and among which a lot of jungle was already springing up, when, just as I passed a low bush about 3 feet high, out went one of the above-mentioned birds; of course the bush contained a nest, a remarkably neat cup-shaped affair, below and outside of fine twigs, then a layer of roots, above which was a lining of the stems of the flower of the ‘theckay’ grass.  It contained three eggs on the point of hatching, out of which I was only able to save one.  It is one of the loveliest eggs I have seen; in colour I can liken it only to a peculiar pink granite that is so common at home in Ireland.  Its ground-colour I should say was white, but it is so thickly spotted with pink and claret that it is hard to describe.  It measured 0.85 x 0.61 inch.”

Captain Wardlaw Ramsay writes in ’The Ibis’:—­“I found a nest containing two eggs in April at the foot of the Karen hills in Burma.”

I have seen too few eggs of this species to say much about them.  What I have seen were rather elongated ovals pretty markedly pointed towards the small end.  The shell fine, but with only a slight gloss; the ground a pinky creamy white, everywhere very finely freckled over with red, varying from brownish to maroon, and again still more thickly with pale purple or purplish grey, this latter colour being almost confluent over a broad zone round the large end.

292.  Spizixus canifrons, Blyth. The Finch-billed Bulbul.

Spizixus canifrons, Bl., Hume, cat. no. 453 bis.

Colonel Godwin-Austen says:—­“Spizixus canifrons breeds in the neighbourhood of Shillong, in May.  Young birds are seen in June."[A]

[Footnote A:  TRACHYCOMUS OCHROCEPHALUS (Gm.). The Yellow-crowned Bulbul.

Trachycomus ochrocephalus (Gm.), Hume, cat. no. 449 bis.

As this bird occurs in Tenasserim, the following description of the nest and eggs found a short distance outside our limits will prove interesting.

Mr. J. Darling, Junior, writes:—­“I found the nest of this bird on the 2nd July at Kossoom.  The nest was of the ordinary Bulbul type, but much larger, and like a very shallow saucer.  The foundation was a single piece of some creeping orchid, 3 feet long, coiled round; then a lot of coils of fern, grass, and moss-roots.  The nest was 4 inches in diameter on the inside, the walls 1/4 inch thick, and the cavity 1 inch deep.  It was built 10 feet from the ground, in a bush in a very exposed position, and exactly where any ordinary Bulbul would have built.”