n one side,
composed exteriorly of blades of rather coarse dry grass (green,
however, as a rule when the nest is first built), and interiorly of
similar, but finer, material. It is an easy nest to find when once
the locality in which the birds breed is discovered, as it is
a conspicuous ball of grass, smeared over, often more or less,
exteriorly with a silky white vegetable-down or cobweb, and many of
the blades of the tussock in which it is placed are often drawn down
and woven into the nest, which at once attracts attention. Then,
again, the cock bird is almost always to be found on the top of some
low tree near the nest, uttering his peculiar ventriloquistic note
'_tissip, tissip, tissip_,' etc. All the above nests were exactly
alike and in similar situations, viz. fixed in the centre of a tussock
of coarse grass on the banks of some deep nullahs running through a
large grass 'Beerh.' The eggs remind me more of the English Robin's
eggs than those of any other species I know. The ground-colour is dull
white, sometimes tinted with pale green, and the markings reddish
fawn. In some cases the eggs are peppered all over with a conspicuous
zone at the large end, sometimes a dense cap instead of a zone. In
other cases the markings, though always present, are almost invisible,
as also the zone or cap. They are about the size of the eggs of the
Spotted Flycatcher. I found a few other nests besides those I have
mentioned during July and August 1875."

Captain Cock informed me that this species is "common in the jungles
around Seetapore. Nest is largish, dome-shaped, and placed low down in
a thorny bush. The bird lays in August five eggs, the _fac-simile_ of
the eggs of _Pratincola ferrea_, perhaps of a more elongated type than
the eggs of that bird."

Mr. H. Parker, writing on the birds of North-west Ceylon, refers to
this bird under the titles _D. jerdoni_ and _D. valida_, and informs
us that it breeds from January to May.

The eggs of this species are somewhat elongated ovals. The
ground-colour is a greenish or greyish stone-colour, and they are
finely and often rather sparsely freckled all over with very faint
reddish brown, or brownish pink in most eggs; these frecklings are
gathered together into a more or less dense zone round the large
end, forming a conspicuous ring there much darker-coloured than the
frecklings over the rest of the surface. The eggs have a faint gloss.

In length they vary from 0.68 to 0.75, and