152 CRATEROPOD1DJE.

but I have seen more than'fifty, and, so far as I am concerned, I
have no hesitation in asserting that, as in the case of the birds so
in that of their nests and eggs, no constant differences can be
detected if only sufficiently large series are compared.

The birds build usually on the upper surface of a horizontal
bough, at a height of from ] 0 to 25 feet from the ground. Some-
times, when the bough is more or less slanting, the nest assumes
somewhat more of a pocket-shape. Occasionally it is built between
three or four slender twigs, forming an upright fork; but this is
quite exceptional.

As a rule nests of the lora very closely resemble those of Leu-
cocerca, so much so that when I sent a beautiful photograph^of a
nest, which I had myself watched building, of the latter species to
Mr. Blyth, he unhesitatingly pronounced it to be a nest of the former.
There is, however, a certain amount of difference ; the lora's nests
are looser and somewhat less compact and firm. My experience does
not confirm Mr. Brooks's remarks (vide infra) that they are usually
shallower; on the contrary all those now before me are, as indeed
all the many I can remember to have seen were, deep, thin-walled
cups, which had been placed on more or less horizontal branches,
not uncommonly where some upright-growing twig afforded the
nest additional security. The egg-cavity averages about 2 inches
in diameter, and varies from an inch to 1| inch in depth; the walls,
composed of vegetable fibres, and varying in different specimens
from only one eighth to three eighths of an inch in thickness, are
everywhere thickly coated externally with cobwebs, by which also
the nest is firmly attached to the branch on which it is seated, as
well as, where such adjoin the nest, to any little twig springing
from that branch. Interiorly they are more or less neatly lined
with very fine grass-stems. The bottom of the nest in its thinnest
part is rarely above one eighth of an inch in thickness, but running,
as it so often does, down the curving sides of the branch, it
becomes a good deal thicker, and where placed on a small branch,
say not exceeding an inch in diameter, the lateral portions of the
bottom of the nest are sometimes more than half an inch in
thickness.

One nest which I obtained recently in the Botanical G-ardens
at Calcutta was built in an upright fork of four slender twigs; and
in this case the bottom of the nest was obtusely conical, and at its
deepest point may have been nearly an inch in depth. I have never
seen a similar nest.

• The eggs are normally three in number, but I have at times
found only two, and these more or less incubated.

Mr. Brooks, writing of a nest he took in the Mirzapoor District,
says :—" Did you ever get particulars of the nest of lora zeylonica on
the forked branch of a mango-tree 12 or 14 feet from the ground ?
ISTest composed of the same materials as that of Leucocerca albi-
frontata, but not quite so neat and much more shallow; eggs
salmon-coloured and spotted with pale reddish brown, intermixed
with a few larger dashes of purple-grey. The bird lays in July;