COLLOOAllA. 33 



which were procured for me on this occasion, and which I kept 

 for the night, scrambled out on to the exterior of the nests and 

 slept in an upright position with the bill pointing straight up. 

 This is evidently the normal mode of roosting resorted to by this 

 species. 



" The interior of this cave, with its numbers of active tenants, 

 presented a siagular appearance. The bottom was filled with a 

 vast deposit of liquid guano, reaching, I was informed, to a depth 

 of 30 feet, and composed of droppings, old nests, and dead young 

 fallen from abovef, the whole mingled into a loathsome mass with 

 the water lodged in the crevice, and causing an awful stench, which 

 would have been intolerable for a moment even, had not the 

 hundreds of frightened little birds, as they screamed and whirred 

 in and out of the gloomy cave with a hum like a storm in a ship's 

 rigging, powerfully excited my interest and produced a long 

 examination of the colony. This guano-deposit is a source of 

 considerable profit to the estate, the hospital-manager of which 

 - informed us that he had manured 100 acres of cofliee with it 

 during that season. Besides this colony there are two smaller 

 off-shoots on the adjoining estate, in one of which, Mr. Bligh tells 

 me, the birds have to pass through a cloud of spray in order to 

 gain access to their nests." 



The eggs that I possess of this species, all sent from the Nil- 

 ghiris, are a dull, almost wholly glossless white ; as a rule slender 

 elongated ovals, almost cylindrical, and sometimes absolutely 

 cylindrical; at times slightly pyriform, and typically, I think, 

 somewhat compressed just beyond the middle. They vary in 

 length from 079 to 0-9 inch, and in breadth from 0-53 to 0-58 

 inch ; but they average 0-83 by 0-5-i inch. 



CoUocalia lincM, Horsf. & Moore. Horsfield's Swiftlet. 

 Collocalia linchi, Honf., Hume, Rough Draft N. ^- B. no. 103 bis. 



Horsfield's Swiftlet breeds abundantly in both the Andamans 

 and Nicobars. 



Xormally it breeds in caves ; indeed, in a manuscript note given 

 me with many others by the late lamented Colonel Tytler, I find 

 the following : — " I may note that I was upwards of two years in 

 the Andamans, and never either saw or heard of any species of 

 Collocalia building inside of houses, sheds, or the like ; these 

 species always build inside caves immediately on the sea-shore." 



But since Colonel Tytler left the Andamans, a change has come 

 over the spirit of their dream, and at the Settlement of Port Blair 

 they breed freely inside houses, both on Eoss and Chatham Islands, 

 the interior of the saw-mills being their most favourite haunt. 

 There is another shed at Viper also in which they breed. 



There has been some grave error in regard to the nests of this, the 

 commonest of the Andaman and Nicobar Swiftlets ; it does not 

 make any of the edible nests. There is no mistake about this ; I have 



TOL. Ill, 3 



