are domed, the entrance being at the side, and so hidden and overhung as almost to escape notice.  Each August the birds appear, coming from the north. and until the middle of March, when they take their departure, they do not indulge in many leisure moments.  There are the old nests to renovate and new ones to build in accordance with the demand of the increasing population, and loads of fruits and seeds and berries to be conveyed from the jungle to the colony.  The shining calornis is a handsome fellow, gleaming black, with purple and green sheen.  The live bird differs so greatly from the dull, stuffed specimen of the museum that one is tempted to endeavour to convey by similitude its wonderful radiance.  A soap bubble, black yet retaining all its changing lights and flashing reflections, is the nearest approach to a just description, and then there are to specify the rich, red eyes, eyes gleaming like polished gems.  Until after the first year of their existence the young are brown-backed, and mottled white and bluish-grey of breast, and would hardly be recognised as members of the colony, but for the shrill notes and restless activity and those flaming eyes—­living gems of wondrous radiance, and the eyes epitomise the life of the bird which is all flame and fever.

Twenty or thirty may be peering about in a bloodwood, and with a unanimous impulse and a call in unison they slip through the forest, and shoot into the jungle, flashing sun-glints.  Eager, alert, always under high pressure, the business of the moment brooks of no delay.  The flocks come and go between the home and the feeding-ground with noisy exclamations and impetuous haste.  With whirr of wings and jeering notes they swoop close overhead, wheeling into the wilderness of leaves with the rapidity of thought, and with such graceful precision that the sunlight flashes from their shoulders as an arc of light.  Work, hasty work, is a necessity, for their wastefulness is extreme, or, rather, do they not unconsciously perform a double duty, being chief among the distributing agents—­industrious and trustworthy though unchartered carders for many helpless trees.  When the company darts again out of the jungle, each with a berry in its bill and each shrilly exulting, many a load is dropped by the way, and many another falls to mother earth in the act of feeding the clamorous young.  Berries and seeds having no means of self-transportation are thus borne far from parent trees to vegetate in sweet unencumbered soil.  Other birds take part in this generous dispersal, but none engage in it so systematically or so openly.

Beneath the tree which is the head centre of the colony is a carpet of debris several inches thick.  Old and discarded nests, fragments of unused building materials, the nutmeg with its lacing of coral-red mace, the blue quandong, the remains of various species of figs, hard berries, chillies, degenerated tomatoes, the harsh seed-vessels of the umbrella-tree, samples of every fruit and berry of attractive appearance, however hot and acrid, all go to form a mulching of vegetable matter such as no other tree of forest or jungle gets.  Prodigal and profuse as she may be, Nature is the rarest of economists.  Out here in the forest is springing up an oasis of jungle, every plant of which owes its origin to the shining calornis.