and learned what seems much to corroborate it.  When the natives prepare to take the nests they enter the cave with torches, and, forming ladders of bamboos notched according to the usual mode, they ascend and pull down the nests, which adhere in numbers together, from the sides and top of the rock.  I was informed that the more regularly the cave is thus stripped the greater proportion of white nests they are sure to find, and that on this experience they often make a practice of beating down and destroying the old nests in larger quantities than they trouble themselves to carry away, in order that they may find white nests the next season in their room.  The birds, I am assured, are seen, during the building time, in large flocks upon the beach, collecting in their beaks the foam thrown up by the surf, of which there appears little doubt of their constructing their gelatinous nests, after it has undergone, perhaps, some preparation from commixture with their saliva or other secretion in the beak or the craw; and that this is the received opinion of the natives appears from the bird being very commonly named layang-buhi, the foam-swallow.  Linnaeus however has conjectured, and with much plausibility, that it is the animal substance frequently found on the beach which fishermen call blubber or jellies, and not the foam of the sea, that these birds collect; and it is proper to mention that, in a Description of these Nests by M. Hooyman, printed in Volume 3 of the Batavian Transactions, he is decidedly of opinion that the substance of them has nothing to do with the sea-foam but is elaborated from the food of the bird.  Mr. John Crisp informed me that he had seen at Padang a common swallow’s nest, built under the eaves of a house, which was composed partly of common mud and partly of the substance that constitutes the edible nests.  The young birds themselves are said to be very delicate food, and not inferior in richness of flavour to the beccafico.

TRIPAN.

The swala, tripan, or sea-slug (holothurion), is likewise an article of trade to Batavia and China, being employed, as birds-nest or vermicelli, for enriching soups and stews, by a luxurious people.  It sells at the former place for forty-five dollars per pikul, according to the degree of whiteness and other qualities.

WAX.

Beeswax is a commodity of great importance in all the eastern islands, from whence it is exported in large oblong cakes to China, Bengal, and other parts of the continent.  No pains are taken with the bees, which are left to settle where they list (generally on the boughs of trees) and are never collected in hives.  Their honey is much inferior to that of Europe, as might be expected from the nature of the vegetation.

GUM-LAC.