EDIBLE BIRDS’ NESTS. 401 
attained the proper size. When gathering time approaches, 
some of the pluckers daily visit the cavern to examine the state 
of the brood. As soon as they find that most of the young are 
beginning to be provided with feathers, their operations com- 
mence. These nests form the first quality; those in which the 
young are still completely naked, the second; while those which 
only contain eggs, and are consequently not yet ripe, rank third. 
The nests with young whose feathers are completely developed 
are over-ripe, black, and good for nothing. All the young and 
eggs are thrown into the sea. The gathering takes place three 
times a year; the birds breed four times a year. In spite of 
these wholesale devastations their numbers do not diminish; 
as many of the young have no doubt flown away before the 
day of execution, or other swallows from still unexplored caverns 
may fill up the void. In this manner about 50 piculs are 
annually collected, which the Chinese pay for at the rate of 
4000 or 5000 guilders the picul. Each picul contains on an 
average 10,000 nests. Dividing these 500,000 nests among 
three gatherings, and reckoning two birds to each nest, we find 
that more than 333,000 swallows inhabit at the same time the 
Javanese coast caverns. 
In the interior of the island, in the chalkstone grottos of 
Bandong, the Salangana also breeds, but in far inferior numbers, 
as here the annual collection amounts on an average to no more 
than 14,000 nests. In these inland caves swallows and bats 
reside together, but without disturbing each other, as the 
former when not breeding leave their caverns at sunrise, 
disappear in the distance, and only return late in the evening, 
when the bats are already enjoying their vespertine or nocturnal 
flight. 
In Sumatra and some other islands of the Indian archipelago, 
birds’ rests are likewise collected, but nowhere in such numbers 
as in Java. They are brought to the Chinese market, where 
they are carefully cleaned before being offered for sale to the 
consumer. The addition of costly spices renders them one of 
the greatest delicacies of Chinese cookery, but as for themseives 
they are nothing better than a fine sort of gelatine. 
The Japanese have long been aware that these costly birds’ nests 
are in fact merely softened alge. They consequently pulverise 
the proper species of sea-weeds, which are abundantly found on 
