ON THE BREEDING OF ACEROS NIPALENSIS. 211 



which after all was misplaced, for the solitary egg was addled. 

 The bottom of the hollow on which the bird sat was level with 

 the lower end of the opening*. In the hole there were merely a 

 few of her own feathers, which I send yon. I also send the 

 egg* and a sample of the plasteringf material, which looks to 

 me uncommonly like the bird's own ordure. 



The entrance, after the plaster was picked away, measured 

 ] 7 inches in length by 4^ inches in breadth, and the hollow of 

 the tree 17 inches in diameter. The height of the hollow could 

 not be measured, but it must have been considerable. I am told 

 that two young ones were taken out of the same hollow last year, 

 and that it has been robbed every season for many years past. 

 The natives also inform me that the Aceros never lays more than 

 two eggs, and occasionally one only, as in the present instance, 

 but that two is the more usual number. The female is said not 

 to leave the nest from the time of her entrance till she comes out 

 with her young ready for flight, a period of about three months. 



The male was seen to feed his mate, through the narrow open- 

 ing, with Dysoxylon fruit the evening before we robbed the nest. 

 At this season of the year Dysoxylon fruit seem to be their 

 principal food. The uest tree was laden with fruit, and was 

 probably chosen, on this account, by the lazy husband, in order 

 to reduce the labor of feeding his wife and children to a 

 minimum. The Lepchas and Nepalese eat both the old and 

 the young of the Aceros, and pronounce them to be rather good 

 eating. 



* The egg is a broad oval, compressed somewhat towards one end, so as to be slightly 

 pjriform. The shell is strong and thick, but coarse and entirely glossless, everywhere 

 pitted with minute pores. In colour it is a very dirty white, with a pale dirty yellow- 

 ish tinge, and everywhere obscurely stippled, when closely examined, with minute 

 purer white specks, owing to the dirt not having got down into the bottoms of the 

 pores. 



It measures 2-25 by 175. — Ed., S. F. 



f <; The plaster appears under the microscope to bo almost entirely composed of 

 vegetable tissue, cells, fibres, oil globules, &c, and contains no evidence of the pre- 

 sence of any clay or mineral matter of any kind. The vegetable tissue looks as though 

 it had been semi-digested, very many of the cells being wholly or partially emptied of 

 their contents, and free granules and globules of a bright yellow oily-looking matter 

 abounding. 



" The most abundant and characteristic forms of cells present are, 1st, small, totally 

 empty thick-walled cells, scattered or still holding together in small patches; 2nd, 

 very large rounded cells full of the yellow oily matter so abundant in the free state, 

 and when full of a deep brown colour. Their contents may be rather of a gummy 

 than oily nature, perhaps, as boiling with liquor potassae reduces the material to a 

 glutinous mass of deep brown colour. There are naturally also some fragments of 

 feathers, spores of fungi, &c, present in small numbers." 



This is our eminent pathologist Dr. D. Cuningham's report, and it makes it quite 

 clear, I think, that the plaster is nothing but the bird's own ordure, with which she closes 

 the aperture, leaving a hole large enough to admit of her protruding the whole closed 

 bill, and a slit below sufficient for the play of the terminal frds. of the lower man- 

 dible when she opens her mouth to be fed. The heap at the foot of the tree of rejected 

 droppings daily cast out by the bird was of the same composition as the plaster, but 

 contained less of the gummy globules and a larger proportion of feathers, scraps of 

 wood, &c, &C.-E&, S. F. 



