242 SYLY1IDJE.

with small lumps of woolly vegetable down, and built between two
leaves carefully sewn to the nest in the same way as the nests ^ of
Orthotomus sutorius. The eggs, three or four in number, are white,
sparingly speckled with light reddish chestnut, with a cap more or
less dense of the same markings at the large end. All of the eggs
in the above-mentioned nests were of this type. I found the nests
in a grass Beerh near Deesa, studded over with low ber bushes
(Ztzypthus jujuba), generally about 2 or 3 feet from the ground, and
in similar situations to those selected by Prinia socialis^ often
amongst dry nullahs overgrown with low bushes and long grass."

Mr. Vidal notes in his list of the Birds of the South Konkan :—
" Common in mangrove-swamps, reeds, hedgerows, thickets, and
bush-jungle throughout the district. Breeds during the rainy
months."

Mr, Gates writes from Pegu:—" Nest with three fresh eggs on
the 19th August; no details appear necessary except the colour
of the eggs, since this bird appears to lay two kinds of eggs. ' My
eggs are very glossy, of a light blue speckled with minute dots of
reddish brown, more thickly so at the large end than elsewhere."

The nests sent by Mr. Blewitt are regular Tailor-birds' nests,
composed chiefly of very fine grass, about the thickness of fine
human hair, with no special lining, carefully sewn with cobwebs,
silk from cocoons, or wool, into one or two leaves, which often
completely envelop it, so as to leave no. portion of the true nest
visible.

The eggs belong to at least two very distinct types. Both are
typically rather slender ovals, a good deal compressed towards one
end; but in both somewhat broader and more or less pyriform
varieties occur. In both the shell is exquisitely fine and glossy;
in some specimens it is excessively glossy. In both the ground-
colour is a very delicate pale greenish blue, occasionally so pale that
the ground is all but white—in one type entirely unspeckled and
unspotted, in the other finely and thickly speckled everywhere, and
towards the large end more or less spotted, with brownish or
purplish red. The markings are densest towards the large end,
where they either actually form, or exhibit a strong tendency to
form, a more or less conspicuous speckled, semi-confluent zone.

Out of fifty-six eggs, twenty-one belong to the latter type. As
in Dicrurus ater, the two types never appear to be found in the
same nest; but the nests in which the two types are found are
precisely similar, and the parent birds are identical.

In length the eggs vary from 0-53 to 0*62, and in width from
0-4 to 0-45; but the average of fifty-six eggs is 0-58 by 0*42.
There is no difference whatever in the size of the two types.

383. Frauklinia rufescens (Blyth). Beavan's Wren-Warbler.

Prinia beavani, Wald.} Hume, Cat. no. 538 his.
Mr. Gates, who found the nest of this "Warbler in Pegu, says:—