THE KOEL. 93 



in India whose fate Mr. Kipling so pathetically deplores. 

 No note among our English song birds' utterances, save 

 only the lark's or the nightingale's, is to my ear so plea- 

 sant as the " kuk, kuk, ko-eel, ko-eel, ko-eel," running up 

 the scale, with which Eudynamis honorata warns us that 

 the time to stew in our own juice is at hand. The natives, 

 who enjoy the said culinary process, love the Koel, and 

 deem his jetty plumage a fit object with which to compare 

 the locks of beauty, even as European poets do the raven's. 

 They also evince their admiration of his song by keeping 

 him caged, and he seems to do very well in confinement, 

 although he must find satoo gram-meal paste a some- 

 what monotonous diet in place of his natural fare of jungle 

 fruits. However, the birds of the cuckoo family, to which 

 he belongs, have accommodating stomachs, so long as the 

 food be soft and plentiful, and the Koel especially must 

 have a hardy constitution to withstand the load of mixed 

 garbage with which his infant interior is presumably filled 

 by his natural foster-parent, the crow. It is much in the 

 Koel 9 s favour that after such an upbringing he reverts to 

 vegetarianism ; and how he gets brought up at all under 

 the circumstances is somewhat of a puzzle. There is no 

 doubt whatever that crows hate the old Koels and perse- 

 cute them literally to the death when they get the chance ; 

 nevertheless, they perform a parent's duties to their off- 

 spring when once the supposititious bantling has been 

 safely foisted into the corvine nest. To get this done the 

 male Koel is said to show himself and draw off pursuit 

 while his mate, who is speckled like a hen pheasant and 

 not in the least like him, deposits her egg where it is to 



