untain-stream, on the rocks and boulders of which the male so loves
to warble; sometimes on a mossy bank; sometimes in some rocky
crevice hidden amongst drooping maiden-hair; sometimes on some
stream-encircled slab, exposed to view from all sides, and not
unfrequently curtained in by the babbling waters of some little
waterfall behind which it has been constructed. The nest is always
admirably adapted to surrounding conditions. Safety is always sought
either in inaccessibility or concealment. Built on a rock in the midst
of a roaring torrent, not the smallest attempt at concealment is
made; the nest lies open to the gaze of every living thing, and the
materials are not even so chosen as to harmonize with the colour
of the site. But if an easily accessible sloping mossy bank, ever
bejewelled with the spray of some little cascade, be the spot
selected, the nest is so worked into and coated with moss as to be
absolutely invisible if looked at from below, and the place is usually
so chosen that it cannot well be looked at, at all closely, from
above.

Captain Unwin sent me an unusually beautiful specimen of the nest of
this species, taken early in May in the Agrore Valley--a massive and
perfect cup, with a cavity of 5 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep;
the sides fully 2 inches thick; an almost solid mass of fine roots
(the finest towards the interior) externally intermingled with moss,
so as to form, to all appearance, an integral portion of the mossy
bank on which it was placed. In the bottom of the nest were interwoven
a number of dead leaves, and the whole interior was thinly lined with
very fine grass-roots and moss. In this case the nest had been placed
on a tiny natural platform and was a complete cup; but in another
nest, also sent by Captain Unwin, the cup, having been placed on the
slope of a bank, wanted (and this is the more common type) the inner
one-third altogether, the place of which was supplied by the bank-moss
_in situ_. In this case, although the cavity was only of the same size
as that above described, the outer face of the nest was fully 6 inches
high, and the wall of the nest between 3 and 31/2 inches thick. The
former contained three much incubated, the latter four nearly fresh
eggs.

A nest from Darjeeling which was taken on the 28th July, at an
elevation of about 3500 feet, from under a rock which partly overhung
a stream, and contained two fresh eggs, was composed in almost equal
proportions