“The only kind of vegetation, excepting a single cocoa-nut, on these desert rocks, is a stunted tree, called by the egg-gatherers _saffron-wood_. It is extremely resinous, and the leaves are used by them as tea; and I suspect it is the same plant as the _tea-shrub_ of the Bahama islands. Among the branches of these trees, at a very small elevation from the ground, the Noddies build nests, that have become large by a long accumulation of dung and sticks. The nests are resorted to for a succession of years, and are repaired and raised upon, season after season, till they have grown into huge piles, among the branches;—the large masses of interwoven twigs prevailing even more than the green foliage. The Egg-bird and the Sandwich Tern, if they are unable to gather any of the dead foliage of these shrubs, or any dried leaves of sea-weed, as a covering for the cavity in the rock in which _they_ nestle, lay their eggs on the bare sand: just making so much of a depression by scratching the ground as suffices to hollow it for the reception of some three eggs, the addition of the _urate of lime_ from their dung sufficiently cementing the loose particles.” In a subsequent communication my friend reverts to the same interesting subject. “The nests of the Noddy, which, though so elaborately framed with sticks, are exceedingly shallow, with scarce any hollowing at all, are always embellished with an addition of broken shells, (_sea-shells_,) generally speckled and spotted like the eggs. Mr. Wilkie examined them, and they were sea-shells. The obvious suggestion for this curious prevalence of a habit, which he found to distinguish _every nest_, was its deceptiveness; so much similarity existed between the sea-shell and the egg-shell. I find that Audubon records a similar fact with the Noddy Terns of the Florida Kays. These are his words: ‘In a great many instances, the repaired nests formed masses nearly two feet in height, and yet all of them had only a slight hollow for the eggs, _broken shells of_ +WHICH+ _were found among the entire, as if they had been purposely_ +PLACED THERE+.’ Mr. Wilkie was totally unacquainted with this noticed particular in Audubon’s ‘Ornithological Biography.’ Has Audubon misread his note ‘_broken shells_,’ and by the following words ‘of which,’ made them _egg-shells_, when they should have been _sea-shells_? This is at least worth a remark. Mr. Wilkie says he took the pieces of shell out of the nest, and inspected them. Audubon merely says, ‘The bushes rarely were taller than ourselves, so that we could easily _see the eggs in the nest_.’”