PRINIA. 291

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. Pour was the normal number of

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 Eangoon 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.'3

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, Hough 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 ail 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 0. longicauda. I have found the
nesfc 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, aud 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."

Now, first, as regards the eggs, it is clearly wrong to say that
the eggs are usually reddish white ; that such eggs, as exceptions,
may have occurred I do not doubt, but I have seen more than fifty
eggs of this bird taken by Miss Oockburn, Messrs. Carter, Davison,
Wait, Theobald, and others, and all were without exception
mahogany- or brick-red, at times mottled, somewhat paler and
darker here and there, but making no approach, even the most
distant, to what Dr. Jerdon says is the usual type. Moreover, I
have taken many hundreds of the eggs of P. stewarti (the northern,
rather smaller form), which is not only most closely allied but
really very doubtfully distinct, and yet I never met with one single
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