86 BIRDS OF THE BAHAMA ISLANDS. 



with its peculiar notes. It is very retiring in its habits, rarely 

 being seen in the open. The inhabitants claim that it destroys 

 great quantities of fruit, but I cannot answer for the truth of this 

 statement, as the stomachs of all those dissected by me contained 

 only insects and berries, and I have never seen it eating fruit of 

 any kind. 



As I never had the afood fortune of findincr the nest of this 

 species, I cjuote from Mr. Gosse, who says, " One of those gigantic 

 and hoary cotton-trees, which are the pride of a Jamaica forest, or 

 some other tree ecjually tall, is usually selected by this Bullfinch for 

 its abode. At the extremity of an immense horizontal limb, it builds 

 a nest of rude materials, as large as a half-bushel measure, the open- 

 ing being near the bottom. I have seen the bird enter this mon- 

 strous structure, but have had no opportunity of examining it. Dr. 

 Robinson observes that ' the Black Bullfinch builds a nest as big as 

 a Blackbird's cage, and, by the artful contrivance of this little volatile, 

 the whole has the simple appearance of a heap of trash, flung on 

 some bough of a tree, as it were, by accident, so that nobody would 

 suppose it to be anything else.' And in another passage, he records 

 having found the nest at Negril, on the 22d of April, 1761, at the 

 summit of a cabbage-palm, eighty-one feet high, which he caused to 

 be felled. 'Among the spadices of this tree was fixed, how, I can- 

 not tell, the nest of the Black Bullfinch, made up of various matter, 

 viz., old cane-trash fibres, silk-cotton, some dry leaves, and at the 

 bottom many tendrils of climbing shrubs, and a very small species of 

 epidendriim, or green wyth, common in this parish. In it I found 



