not appear again for months, thus destroying natural food for nectar eaters. Insect life after a hurricane increases enormously, an ideal breeding ground for them having been formed in the masses of rain soaked leaves and vegetation rotting on the ground. Nectar eaters, being starved and not entire unused to small insects eaten along with nectar, should not find great difficulty in turning to an entirely insect diet and be able to exist on such till flowers re- turned, when it would probably not entirely lose its habit of insect eating. Coconuts flower regularly every 3 or 4 weeks, a more or less regular continuous cycle, continuing unless a hurricane damages them, when flower may not appear for months. As populations in coconuts have increased, the birds have turned more from nectar to insects till the present ratio of 60 per cent insects and 40 per cent nectar is the rule. Naturally when vomiting on shooting (Myzomela also does this) insects also may be carried out of the stomach and in collected specimens' stomachs appear more or less empty, though if tasted reveal nectar, which if put on the tickets might lead to the impression that nectar was in almost all stomachs and insects in only a few. This would be wrong as eye observation of the birds feeding shows defi- itely that insects form the major part of their food. On the other hand, unless tasted the stomach residue would give an impression that insects only formed their sole diet, quite a wrong impression again which is disapproved by eye witness of bird chasing small moths dislodged from the bark of trees and fluttering and turning in the air for half a minute or more sometimes to make a capture. Their clumsy efforts at