BRITISH BORNEO. 65 
tea, sugar, cocoa, Manila hemp, pine apple fibre, and other 
tropical products for which the soil, and especially the rain- 
fall, temperature and climatic conditions generally, including 
entire freedom from typhoons and earthquakes, eminently 
adapt it, and many of which have already been tried with suc- 
cess on an experimental scale. As regards pepper, it has 
been previously shewn that North Borneo was in former days 
an exporter of thisspice. Sugar has been grown by the natives 
for their ,own consumption for many years, as also tapioca, 
rice and Indian corn. It is not my object to give a detailed 
list of the productions of the country, and I would refer any 
reader who is anxious to be further enlightened on these and 
kindred topics to the excellent ‘‘Hand-book of British North 
Borneo,” prepared for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 
1886, at which the new Colony was represented, and published 
by Messrs. WILLIAM CLOWES & SONS. 
The edible birds’-nests are already a source of considerable 
revenue to the Government, who let out the collection of them 
for annual payments, and also levy an export duty as they 
leave the country for China, which is their only market. The 
nests are about the size of those of the ordinary swallow and 
are formed by innumerable hosts of swifts—Collocalia fuct- 
phaga—entirely from a secretion of the glands of the throat. 
These swifts build in caves, some of which are of very large 
dimensions, and there are known to be some sixteen of them 
in different parts of British North Borneo. With only one 
exception, the caves occur in limestone rocks and, generally, 
at no great distance from the sea, though some have been dis- 
covered in the interior, on the banks of the Kinabatangan River. 
The exception above referred to is that of a small cave on a 
sand-stone island at the entrance of Sandakan harbour. The 
Collocalia fuciphaga appears to be pretty well distributed over 
the Malayan islands, but of these, Borneo and Java are the 
principal sources of supply. Nests are also exported from the 
Andaman Islands, and a revenue of £30,000 a year is said to 
be derived from the nests in the small islands in the inland 
sea of Tab Sab, inhabited by natives of Malay stock. 
The finest caves, or rather series of caves, as yet known in 
the Company’s territories are those of Gomanton, a limestone 
