540 



NOTES FROM THE WEST INDIES. 



felt eager and anxious in my travels to acquire a specimen of so curious 

 a nest. The only one I possessed myself of, I now send you. The 

 loops by which it was strung up are veryinartificially made, and it 

 does not otherwise exhibit much nice labour in its construction ; never- 

 theless, the simplicity of its materials renders it curious. 



The twine-like fibres of which it is woven, are the filaments taken 

 from between the folds of the gigantic fan palm (Corypha urnbraculd). 

 These threads break away from the leaf in the process of expansion, 

 and hang like fringes to the magnificent foliage. I found the nest situ- 

 ated, just as the drawing represents it, between the crutches of a low 

 thorny, small leafed shrub, in an open savannah, in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of a forest of these palms. In addition to the sketch 



of one of the superb leaves, I send you some of the fibres themselves, 

 collected from the growing tree, that you may see the ordinary length 

 of the threads. The leaf varies from six to nine feet in diameter, a 

 magnificent specimen of vegetation in these gardens of the sun. When 

 passing through the forest of which I have spoken, I was overtaken by 

 a shower of rain, and myself and horse found shelter from the wet 

 under a single leaf of one of the young low trees. I rode under it, and, 

 seated on the horse, remained there secure from the wet for the space 



