ing out holes
in which to deposit their eggs. The hen, after having laid the first
egg, does not emerge from the nest till the young are ready to fly.
During the whole of this period she is kept a close prisoner, the
aperture to the nest cavity having been closed by her mate and herself
with their own droppings, a small chink alone being left through which
she is able to insert her beak in order to receive the food brought to
her by the cock.

Mr. A. J. Currie gives an interesting account of a grey hornbill's
nest he discovered at Lahore in 1910. About the middle of April he
noticed a pair of paroquets nesting in a hole in a tree. On April 28th
he saw a hornbill inspecting the hole, regardless of the noisy
protests of the paroquets. On the 30th he observed that the hole had
become smaller, and suspected that the hornbills had taken possession.
On May 1st all that was left of the hole was a slit. On May 6th Mr.
Currie watched the cock hornbill feeding the hen. First the male bird
came carrying a fig in his bill. Seeing human beings near the nest, he
did not give the fig to the hen but swallowed it and flew off.
Presently the cock reappeared with a fig which he put into the slit in
the plastering; after he had parted with the fig he began to feed the
hen by bringing up food from his crop. During the process the beak of
the hen did not appear at the slit.

On May 7th Mr. Currie opened out the nest. The hole was sixteen feet
from the ground and the orifice had a diameter of three inches; all of
this except a slit, broadest at the lower part, was filled up by
plaster. This plaster was odourless and contained embedded in it a
number of fig seeds.

The nest hole was capacious, its dimensions being roughly 1 foot by 1
foot by 2 feet. From the bottom five handfuls of pieces of dry bark
were extracted. Three white eggs were found lying on these pieces of
bark. The sitting hen resented the "nest-breaking," and, having pecked
viciously at the intruder, tried to escape by climbing up to the top
of the nest hole. She was dragged out of her retreat by the beak,
after an attempt to pull her out by the tail had resulted in all her
tail feathers coming away in her captor's hand!

The young green parrots have all left their nests and are flying about
in noisy flocks. They may be distinguished from the adults by the
short tail and comparatively soft call.

Most pairs of hoopoes are now accompanied by at least one young bird
which is