West-Indian Humming-birds. 517 



of the nest. Another beautiful one is made mostly of cotton, 

 cobwebs, and small pieces of silver-grey lichen. Another 

 has a good deal of moss in its composition, and one that is 

 composed almost exactly of the same material as the very 

 small one just mentioned, but is a larger nest, is merely 

 saddled on to a horizontal twig, without any side support at 

 all. One of those attributed to Glaucis hirsuta is 6 inches 

 long outside. The nest inside rises higher at the back where 

 it joins on to the leaf, measuring 2^ mches in depth here, 

 while in front it measures only 1^ inch in depth. It is not 

 a very compact structure, the egg being almost visible 

 through the sides. It is made of fine fibres, felted together 

 outside by spiders' webs, with a small leaf here and there. 

 It ends in an untidy tail, mixed with little bits of stick, dead 

 leaves, &c. There is no lining inside, and the leaf to which 

 it is attached is plainly discernible through the fibres of which 

 the nest is made. 



The one I discovered myself had no eggs in it, and was 

 composed of dry moss, grass-seed husks, and cobwebs, the 

 outside being a mass of shreds of the dried peel of bamboo- 

 twigs. There was another nest not many yards away on 

 another bamboo, but rather higher up, about 20 feet or so. 

 This was unfinislied, and we left it. In this clump of 

 bamboos, too, were several nests of the little " Sugar-eater," 

 which I think is Ccereba cyanea. I saw no Humming-birds 

 near this clump, so do not know to which species the nest I 

 found belongs. 



Passing from Tobago, we made our last stay at Grenada. 

 Here the Governor, Sir Charles Bruce, was most kind to us 

 in every respect, and readily gave us a permit to collect 

 birds. There are but three species of Humming-birds in 

 Grenada — Glaucis hirsuta, Eulampis holosericeus, and Beltona 

 cristata. This latter bird is very much like B. exilis, except 

 that his crest, instead of being golden green entirely, has 

 the upper half of it of a rich purplish blue, and the colour of 

 his upper plumage is of a bluer shade than in B. exilis. I 

 do not think that the hen birds of these two species arc to be 

 distinguished one from another. 



