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SHORTER NOTES 



Bird Nests from Jamaica. — On our recent trip to Jamaica 

 we had the pleasure of going down on the same steamer with 

 the ornithologist of the New York Zoological Park and his wife, 

 and spent one delightful afternoon together at Hope Gardens, 

 among the flowers and the birds. The humming-birds are always 

 the most attractive visitors to the flowers of the tropics and are 

 naturally very much admired. I made an effort to secure the 

 nests. That of the "doctor-bird," Aitliurus polytimis, a large 

 black humming-bird with two long tail feathers was sent to me 

 from Cinchona where it was found suspended from the leaves of 

 the pampas grass and is composed of the woolly scales of one 

 of the tree-ferns, Alsophila priiinata. The outside is covered and 

 bound together with a fine net-work of spider's web and orna- 

 mented with pieces of lichen. The eggs were white and frag- 

 ments of them still remain in the nest. It measures 2^/^ inches 

 in depth on the outside and i inch inside, is 6 inches in circum- 

 ference and I y2 inches across the top and is wonderfully soft and 

 light and a rufous brown color. 



The humming-birds are particularly fearless and numerous in 

 Jamaica and visit the flowers in the drawing-rooms daily, scolding 

 if your presence annoys them and fluttering over your head. 

 One of them attempted to make its nest in a vase of flowers at 

 " Bullstrode " near Grange Hill. 



We also have a nest of the Jamaica swift made of the down 



from various species of Tillandsia, presented to us by T. B. 



Sturridge, Esq., of Union Hill. 



Elizabeth G. Britton. 



Notes on Rutaceae. — Xanthoxylum Nashii Wilson, sp. nov. 



A prickly shrub or small tree 3-4.5 m. high, with slender 

 grayish branches; young twigs light gray, verrucose-glandular ; 

 stipular prickles in pairs, numerous, slender, straight or slightly 

 curved, spreading, chestnut-brown, becoming gray with age ; 

 leaves odd-pinnate, 0.5-1.5 cm. long, the petioles, and rachis (if 

 present), narrowly winged ; leaflets 3, occasionally 5, obovate, 

 truncate or rounded and often emarginate at the apex, cuneate at 

 the base, minutely and often obscurely crenulate above the 



