d a nest of a
different type. Of these one was built amongst the stems of a common
prickly labiate marsh-plant which has white and mauve flowers. There
was a straggling framework of fine grass, firmly netted together with
cobwebs, and a very scanty lining of down. The nest was egg-shaped,
and the aperture on one side near the top. Mr. Brooks, I believe, once
obtained a similar one; but the vast majority of the others that any
of us have ever got have been of the type first described, which
corresponds closely with Passler's account.

Five is the usual complement of eggs; at any rate I have notes of more
than a dozen nests that contained this number, and in more than half
the cases the eggs were partly incubated. I have no record of more
than five, and though I have any number of notes of nests containing
one, two, three, and four eggs, yet these latter in almost all these
cases were fresh.

Mr. Blyth says that this species is "remarkable for the beautiful
construction of its nest, _sewing_ together a number of growing stems
and leaves of grass, with a delicate pappus which forms also the
lining, and laying four or five translucent white eggs, with
reddish-brown spots, more numerous and forming a ring at the large
end, very like those of _Orthotomus sutorius_. It abounds in suitable
localities throughout the country."

I must here note that Mr. Blyth never paid special attention to eggs,
or he would have hardly said this, because the character of the
markings are essentially different. Those of the Tailor-bird are
typically _blotchy_, of the present species _speckly_.

Colonel W. Vincent Legge writes to me from Ceylon that "in the Western
Province it breeds from May until September, and constructs its nest
either in paddy-fields or in guinea-grass plots attached to bungalows."

The nest is so beautiful and so neatly constructed that perhaps a
short description of it will not be out of place. A framework of
cotton or other fibrous material is formed round two or three upright
stalks, about 2 feet from the ground, the material being sewn into the
grass and passed from one stalk to the other until a complete net
is made. This takes the bird from one to two days to construct[A].
Several blades, belonging to the stalks round which the cotton is
passed, are then bent down and interlaced across to form a bottom
on which, and inside the cotton network, a neat little nest of fine
strips of grass torn off from the blade is b