MACHLOLOPHUS,	37
tinge, and sparingly sprinkled with lilac spots or specks, and
having a well-defined lilac ring at the larger end."
From Nynee Tal, Colonel G-. P. L. Marshall writes :—" This species
makes a beautifully neat nest of fine moss and lichens, globular,
with side entrance, and thickly lined with soft feathers. A nest
found on Cheena, above Nynee Tal, on the 24th May, 1873, at an
elevation of about 7000 feet, was wedged into a fork at the end of
a bough of a cypress tree, about 10 feet from the ground, the
entrance turned inwards towards the trunk of the tree. It con-
tained one tiny egg, white, with a dark cloudy zone round the
larger end.
"About the 10th of May, at Naini Tal, I was watching one of
these little birds, which kept hanging about a small rhododendron
stump about 2 feet high, with very few leaves on it, but I could
see no nest. A few days later I saw the bird carry a big cater-
pillar to the same stump and come away shortly without it; so I
looked more closely and found the nest, containing nearly full-
fledged young, so beautifully wedged into the stump that it ap-
peared to be part of it, and nothing but the tiny circular entrance
revealed that the nest was there. It was the best-concealed nest
for that style of position that I have ever seen."
These tiny eggs, almost smaller than those of any European
bird that I know, are broad ovals, sometimes almost globular, but
generally somewhat compressed towards one end, so as to assume
something of a pyriform shape. They are almost entirely glossless,
have a pinkish or at times creamy-white ground, and exhibit a
conspicuous reddish or purple zone towards the large end, com-
posed of multitudes of minute spots almost confluent, and inter-
spaced with a purplish cloud. Paint traces of similar excessively
minute purple or red points extend more or less above and below
the zone. The eggs vary from 0*53 to 0^$58 in length, and from
0-43 to 0-46 in breadth; but the average of twenty-five is 0*56
nearly by 0*45 nearly.
41. MacMolopkus spilonotus (BL).    The Blade-spotted Yellow Tit,
Machlolophus spilonotus (Bl), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 281.
Mr. Mandelli found a nest of this species at Lebong in Sikhim on
the 15th June in a hole in a dead tree, about 5 feet from the ground.
The nest was a mere pad of the soft fur of some animal, in which a
little of the brown silky down from fern-stems and a little moss
was intermingled. It contained three hard-set eggs.
One of these eggs is a very regular oval, scarcely, if at all,
pointed towards the lesser end; the ground-colour is a pure dead
white, and the markings, spots, and specks of pale reddish brown,
and underlying spots of pale purple, are evenly scattered all over
the egg; it measures 0-78 by 0'55.