e nests were placed a few feet apart in an immensely thick patch of
elephant-grass, the undergrowth being fine, once tall, but now dead,
grass. It was upon this dead stuff, which in May is much flattened
down, that I found the nests. They were not attached to anything, but
simply laid in a depressed platform about a foot above the ground, in
among the thickest of the stalks of elephant-grass.

"The nest is a bulky structure, some 6 or 8 inches in external
diameter, and 4 inches in height, composed chiefly of coarse reeds,
becoming finer interiorly till the egg-cup is reached, where the
grasses employed are tolerably fine and neatly interwoven. The cavity
itself is more than a hemisphere, the diameter being 3 inches and the
depth about 2 inches.

"The eggs are of a beautiful blue colour, rather pointed at one end."

Colonel Tickell has the following note on the nidification of this
species in the Asiatic Society Journal, 1848, p. 301:--

"_Burra phenga_.--Nest hemispherical, of grasses rather loosely
interwoven; generally on bushes in jungle. Eggs two to four; rather
lengthened shape; clear, full, verditer blue.--June."

Mr. J.R. Cripps writes of this bird in Eastern Bengal:--"Very common,
and a permanent resident, keeping to grass-fields in small parties of
seven to ten. Very noisy. On the 2nd December, 1877, I found a nest
with three slightly-incubated eggs in a small babool bush which stood
in a 'sone' grass-field. The nest was a deep cup, whose foundation was
a few leaves over which sone-grass was woven rather loosely. Lining
of fine grass-roots. The nest was placed in amongst some coarse grass
which grew up in the centre of the bush, and was three feet from the
ground. External height 4, diameter 41/4, internal diameter 21/2, depth
21/2 inches. Both Messrs. Marshall and Hume in their works on 'Birds'
Nesting' give March and September as the two periods for these birds
to lay, but the clutch I found were exceptionally late."

Mr. J. Inglis writes from Cachar:--"The Striated Reed-Babbler is
exceedingly common during the whole year. It breeds from March
onwards, making its nest in longish grass."

The eggs closely resemble those of _A. caudata_ both in colour and
shape, but they are conspicuously larger. To judge from Hewitson's
figure, for I have never seen the egg, they in shape, size, and colour
closely resemble the eggs of _Accentor alpinus_, some I have being
very slightly larger, and others exactly the sam