branded from the days of Pliny. The Goatsuckers, or Nightjars, belong, of course, to the Tribe Fissirostres. There are half-a-dozen species of them in India, of which one occurs in Bombay. I have only caught occasional glimpses of it, but it can be no other than Caprimulgus asiaticus, the Common Indian Nightjar. Its voice is a strange sound and has been compared to a small stone skimming along on ice. All the members of this family lay their eggs, only two, on the bare ground, in the hot season. They are of a pale salmon, or stone colour, patched and blurred with purplish brown.
The next family of the Fissirostres contains the Bee-eaters. Everybody knows the little grass-green bird, with a long bill and two long, thin feathers, outgrowing the rest of its tail by a couple of inches, which sits on a twig, or telegraph wire, and darts after passing flies; but I have met many who did not know what to call it. It is the Common Indian Bee-eater (Merops viridis). In Bombay it is to be seen everywhere from the end of the rains till the beginning of the hot season, but disappears in the interval. Yet it is not ranked as a migratory bird, and it is not so in the usual sense. It only leaves us during the breeding season, because it cannot find comfortable family quarters in our island. It makes its nest in a burrow, as long as a man's arm, which it digs for itself. Its only pickaxe is its own slender beak, so it seeks some river bank, or similar situation, where the soil is soft. At such a place hundreds of them will congregate and bring up their young in company. That business over, they disperse again and pursue their useful mission of keeping down the flies; for though they
