a country so full of brilliant-plumaged
birds as Borneo is; but, as they spend most of their lives in the
depths of these sombre caves, I suppose it is only natural that their
plumage should be obscure and plain. These birds'-nest caves are found
all over Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, and also in Java and other
parts of the Malay archipelago, but these are by far the largest. The
revenue from these caves alone brings the Government a very large
sum. By far the greatest number of these nests are sent to China,
where birds'-nest soup is an expensive luxury. The natives of Borneo
do not eat them. For myself, I found the soup rather tasteless.

We were told that if they missed one season's nest collecting, most
of the birds would forsake these caves, possibly because there would
be so little room for them to build again. I learned that they build
and lay four times a year, but I think that they meant that both
the black and the white-nest birds lay twice each. The white kind
build their first nests about March, and the black kind in May, and,
as these nests are all collected before they have time to hatch their
eggs, there are no young birds till later in the year, when the nests
are not disturbed, but the old nests are collected with the new ones
the following year. If the guano could be easily transported to the
coast it would be a paying proposition, but the Government fears that
it might frighten the birds away.

About dusk that evening after we had returned to our hut, I heard a
noise like the whistling of the wind, and, going outside, I saw a truly
wonderful sight, in fact a sight that filled me with amazement. The
millions of small bats which share these caves with the birds were
issuing forth for the night from the small hole I spoke about on the
very top of the rock leading into the large cave, but what a sight it
was! As far as the eye could see they stretched in one even unbroken
column across the sky. They issued from the cave in a compact mass
and preserved the same even formation till they disappeared in the far
distance. As far as I could see there were no stragglers. They rather
resembled a thick line of smoke coming out of the funnel of a steamer,
with this exception that they kept the same thick line till they went
out of sight. The most curious thing about it was that the thick line
twisted and wriggled across the sky for all the world like a giant
snake, as if it were blown about by gusts of wind, of