PALM SWIFT. 61 



various parts, where they had been concealed before. 

 The tree, however, was too smooth to be climbed, 

 and as we watched beneath for the birds to return, 

 one and another came, but charily, and entered their 

 respective nests. Although several other cocoa-nuts 

 were close by, I could not discern that any one 

 of them was tenanted but this, and this so nume- 

 rously, whence I inferred the social disposition of 

 the bird. At some distance we found another tree, 

 at the foot of which lay the dried fronds, spadices, 

 and spathes, which had been, in the course of growth, 

 thrown off, and in these were many nests. They 

 were formed chiefly in the hollow spathes, and were 

 placed in a series of three or four in a spathe, one 

 above another, and agglutinated together, but with 

 a kind of gallery along the side, communicating with 

 each. The materials seemed only feathers and 

 silk-cotton (the down of the Bombax}; the former 

 very largely used, the most downy placed within, 

 the cotton principally without ; the whole felted 

 closely, and cemented together by some slimy fluid, 

 now dry, probably the saliva. With this they were 

 glued to the spathe, and that so strongly, that in 

 tearing one out, it brought away the integument 

 of the spathe. The walls of the nests, though for 

 the most part only about a quarter of an inch 

 thick, were felted so strongly, as to be tenacious 

 almost as cloth. Some were placed within those 

 spathes that yet contained the spadices ; and in this 

 case the various footstalks of the fruit were en- 

 closed in a large mass of the materials, the walls 

 being greatly thickened. All the nests were evi- 



