512 Mr. G. E. Lodge on some 



round the flowers seeking his food. The liumming of this 

 bird is not so loud as that of the Jamaica Mellisuga minima, 

 but he can fly faster. Wherever there are flowers, there 

 this little bird will be found, from the white cedars growing 

 from the shingle on the beach to the densest tangle of forest 

 up in the mountains. I do not think I ever saw one feeding 

 among the banana-blooms, but every other flower it seemed 

 fond of. If there is a choice, I shouhl say it was for the 

 blossoms of the lime-trees (which here grow in great 

 quantities and smell very sweet), lantana, allamanda, and a 

 little kind of pea, with yellow flowers, which the negroes grow. 

 There were also a few trees, not unlike acacias, with white 

 blossoms, of which these birds were very fond, and I have 

 seen six or eight of them on one small tree of this sort, 

 all busy hunting, ever and anon chasing each other with 

 shrill chirps, generally more males than females. They are 

 inquisitive, and will sometimes come and hover a few inches 

 from the muzzle of a gun that is pointed at them. 



Three nests were brought to us, but whether they were 

 owned by this species or by E. holosericeus I do not know. 

 There were no eggs in them. They were very neat, and 

 looked like tiny Goldfinches^ nests,madeprincipally of white 

 cotton down, with little bits of lichen, moss, and fine grass- 

 fibres, the foundation made of coarser bits of dead grass, and 

 were all placed at the end of a drooping twig, just where the 

 terminal leaves shoot out, these fringing out just below the 

 nest. 



I had many a hunt for the nests in places that were swarm- 

 ing with the males of Belluna exilis, thinking that the females 

 were probably sitting on their eggs hard by, but I never 

 succeeded in finding any. 1 found the beginning of a nest 

 once, placed on a rank weed growing from the bank of a moun- 

 tain pathway, I should think at an elevation of over 1000 

 feet. I saw the male bird fly there, and on lifting up a fern- 

 leaf, which was hanging just over the place, discovered this 

 beginning of the nest. I visited it twelve days afterw^ards, 

 but, although there was more done to it, it had evidently been 

 deserted. 



