the name given by Vaillant, with some propriety, to a kind of birds which were observed in South Africa, both by him and Pateron, to inhabit apparently the same enormous nests. Cutting one of these nests in pieces with a hatchet, he perceived that the principal and fundamental piece consisted of a mass of strong coarse grass (called by the Hottentots *Bohmen's gras*), without any mixture, but compact and firmly knit together as to be impenetrable to the rain. This nucleus is the commencement of the structure; and each bird builds and applies to it its particular nest. But these cells are formed only beneath and around the mass; the upper surface remains void, without, however, being useless; for, as it has a pro-

jecting Each cell is three or four inches in diameter, which is sufficient for the bird. But as they are all in contact with one another through the greater part of the surface of the mass, they appear to the eye to form but one building, and are distinguishable from each other only by a little external aperture, which serves as an entrance to the nest; and even this is sometimes common to three different nests, one of which is situated at the bottom, and the other two at the sides.

The nest which he examined contained 320 inhabited cells, which, supposing a male and female to each, announce a society of 640 individuals. Such a calculation, however, would not be exact; for whenever our author fired at a flock of these birds, he always killed four times as many females as males. "For the rest (says he), these birds have nothing very remarkable in their plumage. It is an uniform brown grey, diversified by a few black spots on the sides, and a large patch of the same colour on the throat. The male is a little larger than the female; in other respects they exactly resemble each other."