The incident lay in my mind for years on years, as a dead germ, apparently, till time had made my mind a nidus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ of 'Adam Bede.
"George Eliot"
Mathilde Blind
Again, in those warm Months, I find that we have vast Varieties of the smaller kinds of Insects floating in the Air, and it is a thing constant, that every Insect from the greatest to the smallest has its proper nidus to hatch and perfect it self in, and is led thither by certain Effluvia which arise from that Body which is in a right State for the preservation of it.
"The Plague at Marseilles Consider'd"
Richard Bradley
The words used to designate such fittings are: nidus; forulus, or more usually foruli; loculamenta; pluteus; pegmata.
"The Care of Books"
John Willis Clark