KOEL 499 



plumage is ashy-grey above (save the rump, which is white) and 

 white beneath. In summer the feathers of the back are black, 

 broadly margined with light orange-red, mixed with white, those of 

 the rump white, more or less tinged with red, and the lower parts 

 are of a nearly uniform deep bay or chestnut. The birds which 

 winter in temperate climates seldom attain the brilliancy of colour 

 exhibited by those which arrive from the south ; the luxuriance 

 generated by the heat of a tropical sun seems needed to develop the 

 full richness of hue. The young when they come from their birth- 

 place are clothed in ashy-grey above, each feather banded Avith dull 

 black and ochreous, while the breast is more or less deeply tinged 

 with warm buff'. Much curiosity has long existed among zoologists 

 as to the egg of the Knot, of which not a single identified or 

 authenticated specimen is known to exist in collections. Yet more 

 than sixty years ago the species was found breeding abundantly on the 

 North Georgian (now commonly called the Parry) Islands by Parry's 

 memorable expedition, as well as soon after on Melville Peninsula 

 by Capt. Lyons, and again, during the voyage of Sir George Nares, 

 on the northern coast of Grinnell Land and the shores of Smith 

 Sound, where Col. Feilden obtained examples of the newly-hatched 

 young {Ihis, 1877, p. 407), and observed that the parents fed largely 

 on the buds of Saxifraga oppositifolia. Gen. Greely subsequently 

 found that Knots bred in small numbers near Discovery Harbour, 

 on the northern shore of Lady Franklin Bay, and obtained from the 

 ovary of an example shot there " a completely formed hard-shelled 

 egg ready to be laid" {Three Years of Arctic Service, ii. p. 377) — a 

 specimen, however, which had to be abandoned in the dire distress 

 to which he and his comrades were subjected. These are the only 

 localities in which this species is known to breed, for on none of the 

 arctic lands lying to the north of Europe or Asia has it been 

 unquestionably observed.^ In winter its wanderings are very 

 extensive, as it is recorded from Surinam, Brazil, Walvisch Bay in 

 South Africa, China, Queensland and New Zealand. Formerly 

 this species was extensively netted in England, and the birds fattened 

 for the table, where they were esteemed a great delicacy, as witness 

 the entries in the Northumberland and Le Strange Household Books ; 

 and the British Museum contains an old treatise on the subject — 

 " The maner of kepyng of knotts, after Sir William Askew and my 

 Lady, given to my Lord Darcy, 25 Hen. VIIL" {AISS. Sloane, 1592, 

 8 cat. 663). 



KOEL, the Hindi name of a well-known Indian CuCKOW, the 

 use of which has been extended to other allied species forming the 



^ The Tringa canutus of Payer's expedition seems more likely to have been 

 T. maritima, which species is not named among the birds of Franz Josef Land, 

 though it can hardly fail to occur there. 



