300 Dr. Ernil A. Goeldi on the Nesting of 



Thionemaniij in liis work ' Fortpflanzungsgeschichte der 

 gesammten Vogel' (1815-56), figures, on plate xlii, fig. 20, 

 what he calls an egg of N. cethereus, but the volume of text, 

 which would give us some information as to the authenticity 

 ol: the object, was never published, I believe. Burmeister, 

 in his ' Systematische Uebersicht ' (1856, vol. ii. p. 375), 

 writes that he got an egg of N. grandis from Beske, a col- 

 lector at that time living in Novo Friburgo (Serra dos 

 Orgjios, Rio de Janeiro) . This egg was described in Cabanis's 

 ' Journal fur Ornithologie ' (vol. i. p. 169) ; but Burmeister 

 confessed to me afterwards personally his doubts on many 

 identifications made by Beske'^, and, as things stand, I 

 think there is no certainty whether the egg in question 

 was really that of N. grandis or of any other species of 

 Nyctibius. 



Burmeister (Th. Bras. ii. p. 375) says that these eggs of 

 A^. grandis — giving us thus to understand that there were at 

 least two — are laid in the hollow of an open branch, without 

 any foundation. Treating of N. cornutus {=N.jamaicensis), 

 the same author writes {op. cit. p. 377) as follows : — " It is 

 said that the bird does not construct a nest, but fixes its eggs 

 to the tree-branches with a viscous fluid ; that the nestlings 

 remain sitting in the fixed half of the egg-shell until able to 

 fly. But Azara^s friend, Noseda, found the real nest in the 

 hole of a tree, with two mottled-brown eggs.'^ 



As stated above, I vi^Qt^\'\i\\ N.jamaicensis^w^ N. cethereua 

 in Southern Brazil, the former, a smaller species, being much 

 more common than the latter : at least this was certainly the 

 case in the mountains of the Serra dos Orgaos, 



In my own collection, made at Colonia Alpina, near 

 Theresopolis, during the years 1891-94, N. jamaicensis is 

 represented by half a dozen specimeas, N. cetliereus only by 



* This reminds me of what I have written about Didelphys alho- 

 guttata (P. Z. S. 1894, p. 466). I also convinced Burmeister that he had 

 confounded together several caterpillars and butterflies obtained in 

 Novo Friburgo, which he had identified on the authority of Beske and 

 described and figured in his work ' Lepidopteres de la R^publique j 

 Arg-entine.'' 



