Others are still more egg-shaped, with a similar aperture near the top, and others are more purse-like.  The material used appears to be always much the same—­fine grass-stems intermingled with blades of grass, and here and there dry leaves of some rush, a little seed-down, scraps of herbaceous plants, and the like; the interior, always of the finest grass-stems, neatly arranged and curved to the shape of the cavity.  The nests are firmly attached to the drooping twigs, to and between which they are suspended, sometimes by line vegetable fibre, but more commonly by cobwebs and silk from cocoons, a good deal of both of which are generally to be seen wound about the surface of the nest near the points of suspension or attachment.

Four appears to be the full number of the eggs.  Mr. Doig, writing from Sind, says:—­“This bird is tolerably common all along the Narra, but as it keeps in very thick jungle it is not often seen unless looked for.  I took my first nest on the 12th, and my second on the 17th of May.  This evidently is the second brood, as I noticed on the same day a lot of young birds which must have been fully six weeks old.  One nest was lined with horsehair and fine grasses.  Four was the normal number of eggs.”

Mr. Gates writes:—­“The Yellow-bellied Wren-Warbler is very abundant throughout Lower Pegu in suitable localities.  In the plains between the Sittang and Pegu rivers they are constant residents, breeding freely from May to August and September.  In Rangoon also, all round the Timber Depot at Kemandine, and in the low-lying land between the town proper and Monkey Point, they are very numerous.”

The eggs are of the well-known Prinia type—­broad regular ovals, of a nearly uniform mahogany-red, and very glossy.  To judge from the few specimens I have seen, they average a good deal smaller, and are somewhat less deeply coloured, than those of P. socialis.  They vary from 0.52 to 0.6 in length, and from 0.43 to 0.48 in breadth.

464.  Prinia socialis, Sykes. The Ashy Wren-Warbler.

Prinia socialis, Sykes, Jerd.  B. Ind. ii. p. 170:  Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E. no. 534. 
Prinia stewarti, Blyth, Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 171; Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E. no. 535.

Prinia socialis.

The Ashy Wren-Warbler breeds throughout the southern portion of the Peninsula and Ceylon, alike in the low country and in the hills, up to all elevation of nearly 7000 feet.

The breeding-season extends from March to September, but I am uncertain whether they have more than one brood.

Dr. Jerdon says:—­“Colonel Sykes remarks that this species has the same ingenious nest as O. longicauda.  I have found the nest on several occasions, and verified Colonel Sykes’s observations; but it is not so neatly sewn together as the nest of the true Tailor-bird, and there is generally more grass and other vegetable fibres used in the construction.  The eggs are usually reddish white, with numerous darker red dots at the large end often coalescing, and sometimes the eggs are uniform brick-red throughout.”