of fine moss-roots and dead leaves with scarcely a trace
of moss. In this case the nest was entirely concealed from view, and
no necessity, therefore, existed for coating it externally with green
moss to prevent its attracting attention.

Dr. Jerdon remarks:--"I have had its nest and eggs brought me (at
Darjeeling); the nest is a solid mass of moss, mixed with earth
and roots, of large size, and placed (as I was informed) under an
overhanging rock near a mountain-stream. The eggs were three in
number, and dull green, thickly overlaid with reddish specks."

"In Kumaon," writes Mr. R. Thompson, "they breed from May to July,
along all the smaller hill-streams, from 1500 up to about 4500 feet.
In the cold season it descends quite to the plains--I mean the
Sub-Himalayan plains. The nest is generally more or less circular,
5 or 6 inches in diameter, composed of moss and mud clinging to the
roots of small aquatic plants or of the moss, and lined with fine
roots and sometimes hair. A deep well-watered glen is usually chosen,
and the nest is placed in some cleft or between the ledges of some
rock, often immediately overhanging some deep gloomy pool."

"On the 16th June," observes Captain Hutton, writing from Mussoorie,
"I took two nests of this bird, each containing three eggs, and also
another nest, containing three nearly-fledged young ones. The nest
bears a strong resemblance to that of the _Geocichlae_, but is much
more solid, being composed of a thick bed of green moss externally,
lined first with long black fibrous lichens and then with fine roots.
Externally the nest is 31/2 inches deep, but within only 21/2 inches; the
diameter about 43/4 inches, and the thickness of the outer or exposed
side is 2 inches. The eggs are three in number, of a greenish-ashy
colour, freckled with minute roseate specks, which become confluent
and form a patch at the larger end. The elevation at which the nests
were found was from 4000 to 4500 feet; but the bird is common, except
during the breeding-season, at all elevations up to the snows, and
in the winter it extends its range down into the Doon. In the
breeding-season it is found chiefly in the glens, in the retired
depths of which it constructs its nest; it never, like the Thrushes
and _Geocichlae_, builds in trees or bushes, but selects some high,
towering, and almost inacessible rock, forming the side of a deep
glen, on the projecting ledges of which, or in the holes from which
small