28 Goss 0)1 Gymnostinops monlezuincE. [January 



if ever, uses it ; and if they do, the blades, so brittle when dry, 

 must be of a very strong hemp-like nature, to long sustain the 

 weight of the nest and its occupants against the wear and tear 

 of the storms and winds. 



The entrance is a purse-like slit at the top, the average length 

 of the nest is about three feet, and the diameter at the rounded 

 base, nine to ten inches. I have never found less than five, nor 

 more than twenty-one nests in a tree ; they are said, however, to 

 build as many as fifty and even more, but the late growing 

 demand in the United States for bananas has caused the 

 producers, heretofore so indifferent and indolent, to be more 

 watchful, and the large colonies of the birds are fast thinning 

 out. The only eggs that have come under my observation I 

 collected March 13, 18S7, at Cayo, a small village on the Be- 

 lize river, in British Honduras, near its western boundary line. 

 There were thirteen nests in the tree, which was a species of 

 locust; these were all hanging from one bough, from two to 

 three feet apart, and at least seventy-five feet from the ground, 

 but the dense undergrowth, a tangled mass of young palms, 

 bushes and vines, supported the tree, when felled, like a cushion, 

 so that, to my surprise, I was able to save unbroken three sets of 

 fresh eggs, two in each nest. As the number of the broken eggs 

 found in the other nests was the same, and as furthermore the 

 nests were not large enough to rear more than a pair of the birds 

 in each, I think it safe to enter two eggs as a full set, and I am 

 also led to believe, from the great difference in the dimensions 

 of the eggs, and in the size of the male and female birds (see 

 measurements given below), that they are hatched in pairs 

 which, as they go in couples, remain together during life. 



First set : 1.49 X i.io, 1.42 X .96 inch; ground color bluish 

 white, thinly marked with specks and spots of brownish black, 

 and wuth dark purple stains. 



Second set : 1.49 X i.oS, 1.40 X i. 00 inch ; ground color bluish 

 white, clouded and marbled with pale rusty brown, with a few 

 zigzag, hair-like streaks of a darker tint, the clouding thickest 

 upon the largest egg. 



Third set: 1.50 X 1-03, 1.40 X .98 inch; one bluish white, 

 without a mark or stain (an aberrant ^zg)^ the other specked 

 and spotted thinly with pale rusty brown, and having a few 

 faint purple stains. 



