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 lhght 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 with 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 (dis, 1877, p. 407), and observed that the parents fed largely 
on the buds of Sazifraga 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.1 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. VIII.” (AZSS. 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 
1 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. 
