.—TESIA. 131

which again is a coating of more skeleton leaves ; they measure
exteriorly 4 or 5 inches in diameter, and the cavities are a little
above 2 by 2*5 inches in diameter.

Mr. Mandelli found two of these nests at Lebong (elevation
5500 feet), near Darjeeling, on the 8th July. One contained three
fresh eggs, the other three slightly incubated ones. They were
about 12 yards apart, in a very shady damp glen, in very dense
underwood, to the stems of which they were attached in a standing
position about 3 feet from the ground. The entrance was on one
side in both cases.

The eggs of this species obtained by Mr. Ghunmie belong to the
same type as those of Bracliypteryso nijiventris and B. albiventris.
In shape they are moderately elongated, rather regular ovals, some-
what obtuse at both ends. The shell is fine and compact, and very
smooth to the touch, but they have not much gloss. The ground
is a pale olive stone-colour, and they are very minutely freckled
and mottled, most densely at the large end, with pale, very slightly
reddish brown ; the freckling is excessively minute and fine.

Two eggs measured 0-8 and O82 in length by 0*6 in breadth.

200. Elaphrornis palliseri (Blyth). The Ceylon Sliort-winy.
Brachypteryx palliseri, BL, Hume, Cat. no. 388 bis.

Colonel Legge, writing in his ' Birds of Ceylon/ says:—" Mr.
Bligh found a nest at JSTuvrara Eliya in April 1870 ; it was placed
in a thick cluster of branches on the top of a somewhat clensely-
foliaged small bush, which stood in a rather open space near the
foot of a large tree; it was in shape a deep cup, composed of
greenish moss, lined with fibrous roots and the hair-like appendages
of the green moss which festoons the trees in such abundance at
that elevation. It contained three young ones, plumaged exactly
like their parents, who kept churring in the thick bushes close by,
but would not show themselves much.3'

201. Tesia cyaniventris, Hodgs. The Slaty-bellied ghort-iuiny.

Tesia cyani venter, Hodgs., Jerd, B. Ind. i, p. 487; Hume, Rough
Draft N. § JS. no. 328.

According to Mr. Hodgson's notes, the Slaty-bellied Short-wing
breeds much like the next species. It constructs a huge globular
nest of green moss and black moss-roots, which it fixes in any
dense dry shrub or clump of shoots, many of which it incorporates
in the walls of the nest. The nest measures externally about 7
inches in height and 5 inches in width ; it has a circular aperture
on one side, a little above the middle, about 2 inches in diameter,
and it is placed at a height of one or two feet from the ground.
Three or four eggs are laid; these are figured as rather broad
ovals, somewhat pointed towards one end, with a whitish ground,
profusely speckled and spotted, especially towards the large end,

9*