806 



SCIENTIFIC EECORD FOR 1885. 



collection as Mr. Hume's is not likely to be formed again, ft)r it is doubt 

 ful if such a combination of genius for organization with energy for the 

 completion of so great a scheme, and the scientific knowledge requisite 

 for its proper development, will ag^ain be combined in a single indi- 

 vidual." * 



The ornithological department of the British Museum, previously 

 ahead of all comi>etitors, has, by these acquisitions, become incompar- 

 ably richer. {Ihis (5), v. 3, pp. 236, 334, 335, 456-403.) 



Nefiting of a Woodpecker. — Interesting observations have been made 

 on the nesting of the brown woodpecker, scientifically known as Microp 

 ternus phaeoceps, by. Mr. Charles Bingham, deputy conservator of the 

 forests of British Burmah. While passing through the Meplay forest re- 

 serve, he startled a woodpecker from a small pyingado tree {Xylia dolab- 

 riformis). Looking up into the branches, he saw "a lar^^e ants' nest, in 

 the center of which appeared a circular hole so exactly like the bor- 

 ings made by woodpeckers ordinarily in the trunks of trees," that he 

 sent up a Karen boy, who was with him, '■'■ to ascertain whether it was 

 possible the Micropternus had been boring into the ants' nest," as he 

 " had heard was the bird's curious habit. The ants' nest was only about 

 10 feet above the ground, placed in a fork of the pyingado, two small 

 branches of which passed clean through it. Climbing up, putting in bis 

 fingers and then a twig," the boy " announced that there were two 

 eggs." Leaving the nest alone for the time being, in the evening Mr. 

 Bingham returgied by the same route, and he was " able not only to cut 

 oft" and carry into camp the whole nest as it was," but he "managed to 

 secure also the hen bird as she flew from the eggs." Arrived at camp, 

 he "got the two eggs out, and then very carefully made a cross-section 

 through the ants' nest so as to divide the boring made by the wood- 

 pecker longitudinally." The ants' nest was "a large, spherical, solid 

 mass of leaves and clay, the leaves outside being arranged one over the 

 other something like the tiles on the roof of a house, but riddled in many 

 places with the entrance tunnels made by the ant, a small black and red 

 species of Myrmica." " Very few of the ants remained in the nest, and 

 the few that were about seemed agitated and stung virulently. Prob- 

 ably the mass of them had been driven off or eaten by the woodpeckers. 

 The tunnel the latter had made was about two inches in diameter and 

 four inches long, bored horizontally in, and ending in an irregular- 

 shaped egg-chamber about ten and a half inches in cross-diameter, but 

 narrowed by the branch of pyingado, which pierced the nest through 

 and through and crossed the egg-chamber diagonally. The bottom of 

 this chamber alone was smooth, but there was no lining, and the two 

 translucent white eggs of the woodpecker had rested on the bare boards, 

 so to speak, of the ants' house. In the excavations made by the ants 

 themselves there were neither eggs, larvae, nor pupae ; probably these all 

 had been removed when the woodpeckers invaded the nest," {Nature^ 

 vol. 32, pp. 52, 53.) 



