MOTTLED NIGHTJARS SWIFTS. 345 



tunity of seeing the localities and studying the facts, which were as follows : 

 On the 24th November, 1894, the son of one of our neighbours and colonists 

 brought to us a dead male Nyctibius jamaicensis and a fresh egg, telling us 

 that he had shot the ' Uratao ' standing upright on the top of a stump. 

 After having killed the bird he climbed up the stump and found, as he had 

 supposed, that the bird had its breeding-place there. In a slight depression 

 on the top he found the egg, which he carefully brought to my cousin, to- 

 gether with the bird itself. My cousin immediately went to the spot pointed 

 out by the boy, and inquired minutely into every detail. 



" The locality is on a sloping hill on the left side of a brook, tributary of 

 the Rio Alpina, which runs through a valley parallel to that of the centre of 

 the colony. In 1891 and 1892 one of our colonists, now dead, had a maize 

 plantation there, but since that time the ground has become what in Brazil 

 is called 'capocira,' i.e. a hill covered with shrubs and small trees of about 

 2 inches in height. Along the declivity of the right side of the brook, at a 

 distance of about 30 metres from the latter, is a path of communication be- 

 tween -the different colonial lots of the valley and the forest-slopes on 

 both sides. The stump in question is about 20 metres distant from 

 the brook, surrounded by shrubs and easily visible from the path on the 

 other side, and was evidently put there three years ago by the former 

 colonist. The nearest human residences are distant from five to six minutes 

 only. 



" The stump, still partly covered with its original bark, has a height of 1/8 

 metres above the level of the ground. Its diameter at top is 9'5 centimetres. 

 The top has in the centre a small depression, caused by decomposition, and 

 scarcely presents sufficient room for a rather large egg. There was no trace 

 of a softer substratum or nest material. 



"The egg measures 41 '5 millimetres in the longitudinal axis, and 30'5 

 millimetres in the transverse axis. Its general colour is white. On the 

 blunt pole, however, are some very delicate pale violet spots, and regularly 

 distributed over the whole surface, are some large ones of brownish-rufous 

 colour resembling drops of dried blood. Neither the former nor the latter 

 markings can be effaced by washing with spirit ; they belong properly to the 

 egg, which is of a very elegant shape." 



The swifts are some of the most rapid in flight of all the birds in the world. 

 "Greased lightning" is a term often applied by naturalists in the East to 

 the flight of some of the species, notably the spine-tailed 

 swifts of the genus Chcvtura. Like some of the goatsuckers The Swifts. 

 alluded to above, the palate of the swifts is aegithognathous, Sub-order 

 but here the resemblance between the swifts and the Passeri- Cypseli. 

 formes ends. Of course, the most swift-like of the perching 

 birds are the swallows, and until recent years these birds were classified 

 together, because they were long-winged, of swift flight, and had the same 

 habit of hawking insects on the wing. In reality, however, the swallows are 

 highly modified flycatchers, and have little in common with the Cypscli, 

 which are more nearly related to the humming-birds of America (Trochili). 

 Like most picarian birds, the swifts have ten tail-feathers, while the swallows 

 have twelve. The latter have two notches in the posterior end of the 

 sternum, while there are no notches in that of the swifts, which further have a 

 very high keel, indicating that they are birds of extremely developed powers of 

 flight. The proportions of the wing-bones are likewise very different in the 

 two groups, being directly opposite to each other, for, whereas in the swifts 



