ETTDYtfAMIS. 393 



pale dirty green, much blotched with reddish brown. Had but 

 one egg brought, and the man reported four Crow's eggs in the 

 same nest." 



Elsewhere I have said, writing from Bareilly : " As we stood 

 waiting for the eggs of the King-Crow to be brought us, a speckled 

 female Coel suddenly emerged from a group of mango-trees in our 

 own compound, pursued by several Crows. The Coel is a parasitic 

 Cuckoo, famous in Indian song as the harbinger of that glad rainy 

 season, when, to quote the Indian poet, the sun-parched widowed 

 earth puts off her" withered, dust-soiled weeds, and, soon to become 

 the joyful mother of autumn's harvests, dons a fresh bridal robe 

 of green. Throughout the rains the loud whistled cry, ' who are 

 you ? ' rings through every copse, and the Coel has from very early 

 times been as great a favourite with the people of Hindustan as ever 

 the Cuckoo was with us. When we came to inspect the clump of 

 mango-trees out of which the angry Crows had come, we found in 

 them no less than seven of their nests, and in two of these dis- 

 covered unmistakable eggs of the Coel. Did these two both belong 

 to the fugitive female discovered when for the third time she made 

 the attempt ? AVeiv they the eggs of sister adventuresses, who 

 had put her up to the locality as one in which business was likely 

 to be done ? I confess I am not deep enough in the secrets of 

 the mottled ladies, whom respectable Crow matrons doubtless look 

 upon as the worst of ' social evils/ to answer these questions, but 

 about the eggs there could be ' no. deception.' " 



One curious fact remains to be noticed. I have never seen 

 Crows feeding fully fledged Coels out of the nest, whereas I have 

 repeatedly watched adult female Coels feeding young ones of their 

 own species. I am pretty nearly convinced that after laying their 

 eggs the females keep somewhere about the locality and take charge 

 of the voung directly they can leave the nest ; but the difficulty is 

 that, while from dissection I am convinced that they lay more than 

 one egg, I never saw more than one young one in charge of an old 

 female. Common as the bird is, and much attention as I have 

 paid to their habits during the breeding-season, there is much still 

 to be ascertained in regard to their social economy. 



The late Mr. A. Anderson remarked that Dr. Jerdon " is correct 

 in stating that the nest of the common Crow (Corvus splendens) 

 is the one almost exclusively used as a nursery for the foundlings ; 

 this however, not because the Coel can be said to have any par- 

 tiality for this Crow in particular, but because the other species (C. 

 cnhiiuHitus) does not lay simultaneously with herself. I firmly 

 believe that if both species nested at the same time, they would 

 be equally in demand as foster-parents. C. adminatiis lays, as 

 a rule, in February and March ; and I have sometimes, though, 

 rarely, seen them do so as late as May and June ; C. splendens, 

 on the other hand, does not generally commence to build till June, 

 which suits the Coel to a nicety." 



On the _?7th May he found a nest containing " three Cool's and 

 four eggs of C. rlii>in<(tus. This nest was built in a tree at my 



