as if they were beneath the surface
of the shell.

The single egg preserved measures 1.11 by 0.8.

A nest sent me by Mr. Mandelli was found, he says, in May, in Native
Sikhim, in a cluster of Ringal (hill-bamboo) at an elevation of nearly
10,000 feet. It is a large, rather broad and shallow cup, the great
bulk of the nest composed of extremely fine hair-like grass-stems,
obviously used when green, and coated thinly exteriorly with coarse
blades of grass, giving the outside a ragged and untidy appearance.
The greatest external diameter is 5.5, the height 3.2, but the cavity
is 4.5 in diameter and 2.2 in depth, so that, though owing to the
fine material used throughout except in the outer coating the nest is
extremely firm and compact, it is not at all a massive-looking one.

60. Scaeorhynchus ruficeps (Bl.). _The Larger Red-headed Crow-Tit_.

Paradoxornis ruficeps, _Bl., Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 5.

Mr. Gammie writes from Sikhim:--"In May, at 2000 feet elevation, I
took a nest of this bird, which appears to have been rarely, if ever,
taken by any European, and is not described in your Rough Draft of
'Nests and Eggs.' It was seated among, and fastened to, the spray of
a bamboo near its top, and is a deep, compactly built cap, measuring
externally 3.5 inches wide and the same in depth; internally 2.7 wide
by 1.9 deep. The material used is particularly clean and new-looking,
and has none of the secondhand appearance of much of the
building-stuffs of many birds. The outer layer is of strips torn off
large grass-stalks and a very few cobwebs; the lining, of fine fibrous
strips, or rather threads, of bamboo-stems. There were three eggs,
which were ready for hatching-off. They averaged 0.83 in. by 0.63 in.
I send you the nest and two of the eggs.

"Both Jerdon and Tickell say they found this bird feeding on grain
and other seeds, but those I examined had all confined their diet to
different sorts of insects, such as would be found about the
flowers of bamboo, buckwheat, &c. Probably they do eat a few seeds
occasionally, but their principal food is certainly insects.
Very usually, in winter especially, they feed in company with
_Gampsorhynchus rufulus_. Rather curious that the two Red-heads should
affect each other's society."

The eggs are broad ovals, rather cylindrical, very blunt at both ends.
The shell fine, with a slight gloss. The ground is white, and it
is rather thinly and irregularly spotted, blotched, and smear