280 SCANSORES. CUCULID^. 



the stuttering voice of this Yellow-billed Cuckoo is 

 heard among the prognostics of the coming rain. 



" The May-bird, unlike the other Cuckoos with 

 us, that never migrate, prefers straggling trees 

 by the wayside to hedgerow thickets. With the 

 first rain that falls, the hedge-trees, cleared of their 

 dust, have begun to put forth fresh foliage, and to 

 form those closer bowers favourable to the shy and 

 soKtary habits of this bird. It is [comparatively] 

 long-winged, and its swift arrowy flight might be 

 mistaken for that of some of the wild-pigeons. It 

 ranges excursively, and flies horizontally with a 

 noiseless speed, dropping on the topmost stems of 

 trees, or descending into the middlemost branches. 

 When alighting, it betrays its presence by a sound 

 like the drawling cuck-cuck-cuck of a sauntering 

 barn-door fowl." 



One which was slightly wounded, on being put 

 into a cage with some Pea-doves, began to attack 

 them by munching out their feathers. It was 

 therefore placed by itself, when it sat moody and 

 motionless; attempting occasionally, however, to 

 seize cockroaches which were put in to it, and 

 biting spitefully at the hand when approached. 



In skinning this bird, an operation very diflicult 

 from the tenderness of the skin, my attention was 

 called to a number of Entozoa, which were writhing 

 about on the surface of the sclerotica of the eyes, 

 within the orbit. They were very active, about 

 half an inch long, and as thick as a horse-hair. 

 Under a lens, they appeared whitish, pellucid, cylin- 

 drical, but tapered at each end ; the intestinal canal 



