These are of a semicircular form, and often three or four feet in diameter.

I once saw the natives take a bees' nest, and a very interesting sight it was.

In the valley where I used to collect insects, I one day saw three or four Timorese men and boys under a high tree, and, looking up, saw on a very lofty horizontal branch three large bees' combs.

The tree was straight and smooth-barked and without a branch, until at seventy or eighty feet from the ground it gave out the limb which the bees had chosen for their home.

As the men were evidently looking after the bees, I waited to watch their operations.