394 MR. С. Е. М. SWYNNERTON ON 
really nothing to pieree—and the nectar lies quite open, a conspicuous, 
shining drop, backed with black, and welling up higher than the edges of 
its containing chalice. The only barrier to it consists (after the flowers are 
sprung) in the numbers of high, upstanding pistils, and not only are these 
extremely tough and pliable, bending easily beneath the bird’s throat and at 
onee springing up again when the pressure is removed, but an attempt to 
break or remove them on my part has almost always resulted in the whole 
flover coming away. A bite without a pull would be more effective, but 
I have witnessed no instance of it nor have I found amputated pistils in the 
very many racemes that Т have specially examined. There are always 
numbers of individual fallen flowers beneath the tree. Here, again, out of 
over a hundred closely examined, only one bore a mark that could possibly 
be attributed to the pressure of a bird’s bill, and it was probably significant 
that nearly all had already, before falling apparently, lost their perianth 
segments, My captive bulbul has never attempted damage nor appeared 
to be in the least inconvenienced by the erect pistils. A few unsprung 
flowers also fall. The birds perch freely on their down-bent pistils in order 
to reach the more inaccessible flowers, and this may, I suppose, result some- 
> seem to fit 
them excellently to resist even this kind of pressure, and I have not found 
times in such breakages. But their toughness and “ spring’ 
any trace of damage either in mature or immature racemes that I have 
examined after I had seen them trampled over by my captive Pycnonotus 
layardi. АП the flowers had sprung back intact to their normal position. 
Grevillea Banksii seems possibly to invite damage to a greater extent with 
its fleshier honey-cups and the diffieulty that our sunbirds, up to Cinnyris 
chalybvus in size, experience in some of the racemes in reaching the upper- 
most flowers. I have occasionally seen narrow vertical slits in these that 
may or may not have been the work of sunbirds. The bird usually perches on 
the main peduncle below the flowers, and draws down slightly with the point 
of his bill each of the latter that he can reach. In doing this he appears 
often to press with his throat and breast such pistils below the flower visited 
as have already been released, and would probably often be bespattered in 
the same regions by any that he might release himself. Especially where the 
pistils hang well out and down he must also receive some of the stigmas on 
the forehead and crown, including probably that of the flower he is probing. 
Arrived as high as he can reach, he has, in the relatively few instances 
that I have watched at all carefully, either gone on to the next spike or 
taken the upper flowers, hovering. Mrs. Thompson confirms this observation, 
and I have other observations that contradict what is, I believe, a somewhat 
general supposition—that sunbirds do not hover: not that they have done 
so at flowers at all frequently in my experience—though, from what 
Mr. W. L. Selater tells me, my experience in this respect is somewhat 
different from his at the Cape. 
