54 A NATURALIST IN BORNEO 



doubtedly plays no small part in the construction or 

 the nest. I have seen but two examples of the nest of 

 A. longirostris, and both of them are in the Sarawak 

 Museum ; the curator of the Museum, my friend Mr. 

 J. C. Moulton, kindly lent me one of the specimens, from 

 which Mr. Edwin Wilson made the two beautiful draw- 

 ings shown on the opposite Plate. The nest is attached 

 to the under surface of a large leaf, 1 and at first sight 

 appears to be composed entirely of skeleton leaves, but 

 a closer examination shows that these are merely the 

 covering of the nest proper, which is a hemispherical 

 cup of interwoven fibres, apparently the mid-ribs of 

 leaves ; it is slung by silken threads to the leaf which 

 supports it, there being a space of less than an inch 

 between the rim of the nest and the under surface of 

 the leaf, just room enough to let the bird creep in. 

 These suspensory threads, which are taken from a 

 spider's web, are passed through holes made in the leaf 

 by the bird's bill and the ends twisted up into knots 

 to prevent slipping. The nest proper is covered over 

 with skeleton leaves, the covering extending much 

 beyond the confines of the nest, so that the whole 

 structure appears to be a roughly oval mass. These 

 skeleton leaves are also secured by transverse lashings 

 of spider silk passing through the supporting leaf and 

 knotted at each end. At one end and at the sides of 

 the structure the skeleton leaves are lashed down tightly, 

 but at the other end their attachment is looser, and this 

 marks the entrance to the nest ; the mother-bird here 

 can creep under the protective covering of skeleton 

 leaves and so into the nest proper. On the upper surface 



1 The other specimen in the Sarawak Museum is attached to 

 the under side of a banana-leaf. 



