Graminicola bengalensis, Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 177. 
Drymoica bengalensis (Jerd.), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 542.

Long ago the late Colonel Tytler gave me the following note on this species:—­“I shot these birds at Dacca in 1852, and sent a description and a drawing of them to Mr. Blyth.  They were named after my esteemed friend Jules Verreaux, of Paris.  They are not uncommon at Dacca in grass-jungle.  I think the bird Dr. Jerdon gives in his ’Birds of India’ as Graminicola bengalensis, Jerdon, No. 542, p. 177, vol. ii., is meant for this species.  The genus Graminicola, under which he places this bird, appears to be a genus of Dr. Jerdon’s own, for it is not in Gray’s ’Genera and Subgenera of Birds in the British Museum,’ printed in 1855.  If it is the same bird as Dr. Jerdon’s, then my name, which I communicated in 1851-52 not only to Mr. Blyth but also to Prince Bonaparte and M. Jules Verreaux, and which was published in my Fauna of Dacca, has, it seems to me, the priority.”

The birds are identical.  Jerdon gave me one of his Cachar specimens, and I compared it with Tytler’s types, and certainly Tytler’s name was published ten years before Jerdon’s (vide Ann. & Mag.  Nat.  Hist., Sept. 1854, p. 176); but no description was published, and I fear therefore that the name given by Colonel Tytler cannot be maintained, unless indeed, which I have been unable to ascertain, either Bonaparte or Verreaux figured or described the specimens Tytler sent them in some French work.

I have only one supposed nest of this species, brought me from Dacca by a native collector who worked there for me under Mr. F.B.  Simson.  He did not take it himself; it was brought to him with one of the parent birds by a shikaree.  The evidence is, therefore, very bad, but I give the facts for what they are worth.

The nest is a rather massive and deep cup, the lower portion prolonged downwards so as to form a short truncated cone.  It is fixed between three reeds, is constructed of sedge and vegetable fibre firmly wound together and round the reeds, and is lined with fine grass-roots.  It measures externally 5 inches in height and nearly 4 inches in diameter, measuring outside the reeds which are incorporated in the outer surface of the nest.  The cavity is about 21/2 inches in diameter and nearly 2 inches deep.  It contained four eggs, hard-set; only one could be preserved, and that was broken in bringing up-country; so I could not measure it, but the shell was a sort of pale greenish grey or dull greenish white, rather thickly but very faintly speckled and spotted with very dull purplish and reddish brown, with some grey spots intermingled.  The nest was obtained (no date noted) between the middle of July and the middle of August.  I note that the eggs were on the point of hatching, so that the fresh egg would probably be somewhat brighter coloured.

389.  Megalurus palustris, Horsf. The Striated Marsh-Warbler.