314 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Austral- Asian countries, as far as N. Guinea. Certain (if not all) 

 of them produce the valued " edible nests " of commerce. 



" In Java," remarks Sir Stamford Raffles, " these birds not 

 only abound amongst the cliifs and caverns of the south coast of 

 the island, but inhabit the fissures and caverns of several of the 

 mountains and hills in the interior of the country. From every 

 observation which has been made in Java it has been inferred that 

 the mucilaginous substance of which the nests are formed is not, 

 as has been generally sujjposed, obtained from the ocean. The 

 birds, it is true, generally inhabit the caverns in the vicinity of 

 the sea, as agreeing best with their habits, and affording them the 

 most convenient resorts for attaching their nests to ; but several 

 caverns are found inland, at a distance of forty or fifty miles from 

 the sea, containing nests similar to those on the shore.* From 

 many of their retreats along the southern coast they have been 

 observed to take their flight in an inland direction, towards the 

 pools, lakes, and extensive marshes, covered with stagnant water, 

 as aflording them abundance of their food, which consists of flies, 

 musquitoes, gnats, and small insects of every description. The 

 sea that washes the foot of the cliff's, where they most abound, is 

 almost always in a state of the most violent agitation, and aff"ords 

 none of those substances which have been supposed to constitute 

 the food of the ' Esculent Swallow.' Another species of Swallow 

 [Swift ?] on this island forms a nest, in which grass or moss, &c., 

 are merely agglutinated by a substance exactly simitar to that of 

 which exclusively the edible nests consist. This substance, from 

 whatever part of these regions tlie nests be derived, is essentially 



* See also Hooyman, in the ' Batavian Transactions,' iii. 95 ; likewise 

 Marsden ; and Sii" G. Staunton, in his uai-rative of the Earl of Macartney's 

 EmLassy to China ; wliilc Mr. G. R. Gray relates (rather as if a novelty), on 

 the authority of Mr. Hugh Cuming, that in the rhUii)pines the nests are 

 found inland to the distance of fifty or sixty miles. One species has, in 

 India, been only observed hitherto in the mountains of the interior, at a 

 distance of many hundred miles from the sea. According to Mynheer 

 Hooyman, however, the nests (even of the same species) vary somewhat in 

 qiiahty in different neighbourhoods. Thus, of those obtained in two inland 

 locaUties, not very far apart, and but a few hours' journey distant fi-om 

 Batavia, he states that the produce of one of these places is at least a third 

 less valuable than that of the other, which latter is in its tiirn reckoned very 

 inferior in quality to the nests gathered at Teruate and other islands chiefly 

 to the eastward of Borneo. These last, however, we suspect, are not the 

 produce of the same species. 



