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composed of fine strips of blades of grass interwoven. The eggs,
five in number, varied much in size. In colour they were bright
blue, most irregularly blotched with various shades of purplish
brown: some of the blotches very large, some mere specks. Each
egg had also washed-out stains or blotches. The smaller eggs were
b/far the brighter.

" By reason of the roof and walls the entrance to the nest was
at one side, but there was nothing that could be called a hole.
The roof projected over the entrance, forming a porch.

" Six or eight nests which I have seen of this species were all
over water. But the birds are by no means confined to marshy
localities.

" Even in the middle of the rains the nests are invariably made
of dry yellow grass.

" One nest found in Eerar was in a baboolbush, where of course
there could have been no leaves pierced."

Mr. E. Aitken writes :—" I have found a good many nests in
Bombay, and it breeds in Poona too. My notes only mention t\vo
nests with eggs, on the 22nd and 2Sth August, but 1 found some
much later; and I am almost certain it begins to lay much earlier,
if not actually at the beginning of the monsoon, like Ortliotomm
and Prinia.

" It builds in gardens and cultivated fields, especially in the
vicinity of water, and often among plants growing in water.

" The nest is very firmly attached to the twigs of some plant
where long grass or other plants completely surround and conceal
it. It is usually about 3 feet from the ground. It varies much
in size and shape, some being much deeper than others, and some
having the top open • others an entrance somewhat to one side.

" I have always found three or ('our eggs—bright blue, with large
irregular purplish-brown blotches and no hair-lines. I should
have said that the nest is a bag, very uniformly woven, of fine
grass, and never with amj lininy—at any rate in none that I have
ever found. They never use the same nest twice, always building
a fresh one even if you only rob without injuring the first. 1
think they have only one brood in the year, but, like Orthutvutus
and Prinia, one or two nests are generally deserted or destroyed
by some accident before they succeed in rearing a brood."

Major C. T. Bingham informs us that this Wren-Warbler is "a
common breeder both at Allahabad and at Delhi from March to
September. Builds a neat bottle-shaped nest in clumps of surpat
grass, of fine strips of the grass itself, which I have repeatedly
watched the birds tearing off. The eggs are lovely little oval fra-
gile shells of a deep blue, blotched and speckled and covered with
fine hair-like lines, chiefly at the large end, of a deep chocolate-
brown."

The eggs are a moderately long, and generally a pretty perfect,
oval, often pointed towards one end, sometimes globular, seldom,
if ever, much elongated. The shell is fine and glossy, and com-
paratively thick and strong. The ground-colour is normally a