321 



not very appetising, anything was valuable that would keep green: 

 and could be used to ward off the dreaded scurvy. It is probable 

 that its distribution to the East was due to this use. 



Its home in the coastal region of south-eastern Brazil has a moist 

 climate; and the countries, which are its new homes, have like 

 conditions. It has recently been recorded by Dr. H. Johnstone and 

 Mr. Henry Tryon in the Report of the Queensland Prickb'-Pear 

 Travelling Commission, to exists in Southern France (as a rare 

 plant), in the island of Teneriffe, in the coastal regions of South 

 Africa from the Cape peninsula to East London, in Natal, at Pretoria 

 and Pietershurg in the Transvaal, at Zanzibar, Beira and Lorenzo 

 Marques in East Africa, in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria 

 and South Australia, as well as in the sub-Himalayan tracts, Assam, 

 Bengal, the eastern parts of the Ce-ntral Provinces of India, Madras, 

 Ceylon and Burma. 



Opiintia moyiacantha is one of the very few Prickly-pears which 

 withstand the moisture of Singapore and are not difficult to cultivate. 



I. H. BURKILL. 



A NEST OF LIVING DRYMOGLOSSUM 

 PILOSELLOIDES. 



It is recorded that birds making nests in Europe sometimes 

 distribute herbs, because seed accidentally gets enmeshed in the 

 material interwoven (Willis and Burkill in Proceedings of the Cam- 

 bridge Philosophical Society, viii., 1893, p. 86) ; but the use of a living 

 fern in the East is probably unrecorded. 



In clearing away a thicket in the Botanic Gardens a nest of the 

 Merebah {Pycnonotus analis) was found in the crown of a tree fern, 

 having a foundation of dead leaves, a lining of Arenga palm fibre, 

 and a wrapping of living and leaf-bearing rhizomes of the common 

 little epiphytic fern Drymoglossum piloselloides, Presl, which by this 

 use had obtained a new coign of vantage. 



Ridley in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society No. 31, 1898, 

 p. 84, writes of this bird in the Botanic Gardens making nests "of 

 bents and roots." 



I. H. BURKILL, 



