,
composed of vegetable fibres, and varying in different specimens
from only one eighth to three eighths of an inch in thickness, are
everywhere thickly coated externally with cobwebs, by which also the
nest is firmly attached to the branch on which it is seated, as well
as, where such adjoin the nest, to any little twig springing from that
branch. Interiorly they are more or less neatly lined with very fine
grass-stems. The bottom of the nest in its thinnest part is rarely
above one eighth of an inch in thickness, but running, as it so often
does, down the curving sides of the branch, it becomes a good deal
thicker, and where placed on a small branch, say not exceeding an
inch in diameter, the lateral portions of the bottom of the nest are
sometimes more than half an inch in thickness.

One nest which I obtained recently in the Botanical Gardens at
Calcutta was built in an upright fork of four slender twigs; and in
this case the bottom of the nest was obtusely conical, and at its
deepest point may have been nearly an inch in depth. I have never seen
a similar nest.

The eggs are normally three in number, but I have at times found only
two, and these more or less incubated.

Mr. Brooks, writing of a nest he took in the Mirzapoor District,
says:--"Did you ever get particulars of the nest of _Iora zeylonica_
on the forked branch of a mango-tree 12 or 14 feet from the
ground? Nest composed of the same materials as that of _Leucocerca
albifrontata_, but not quite so neat and much more shallow; eggs
salmon-coloured and spotted with pale reddish brown, intermixed with a
few larger dashes of purple-grey. The bird lays in July; three eggs.
This is the only nest I have not taken since I came to India the
second time."

From Raipoor, Mr. F.R. Blewitt remarks:--"The Iora breeds from July to
September, and certainly _not_, as Dr. Jerdon supposes, twice a year.
Both birds assist in the building of the nests, and there evidently
appears to be no choice of any particular kind of tree on which to
build. I have found them indiscriminately on the mango, mowah, neem,
and other trees. The nest is invariably made either just above or
between the fork of two outshooting slender horizontal branches. It
is very neatly made, deeply cup-shaped, of grass and fibres, with
spider's web on the exterior. The maximum number of eggs is three;
they are of a pale whitish colour, marked generally, chiefly at the
broad end, with brownish spots. The b