THE 00L07Y OF INDIAN PARASITIC CUCKOOS. 361 



which contained three eggs of the owner and this one quite fresh. The 

 one from the oviduct was unfortunately too badly smashed hy shot and 

 the full of the bird to preserve or measure. 



' ; The egg I have is, now much faded, a pale cloar blue, glossy and a 

 good deal pointed at the smaller end. Size 1'18" by *S0". 



Then, together with some eggs sent to me, Col. Rattray sent me the 

 leg of an embryo which he had taken from an egg exactly matching 

 those above described and which he had found in a nest of Trocha- 

 lopterum Uneatum (The Himalayan Streaked Laughing-Inrush), 

 together with three eggs of the parent bird. The leg was undoubtedly 

 that of a cuckoo and could have only belonged to this species, so to Col. 

 Rattray belongs the honour of taking three eggs of the Large Hawk- 

 Cuckoo. 



It is impossible in writing of this cuckoo's eggs to pass over in silence 

 the accounts of Mr. Morgan and Miss Cockburn as given in Hume's 

 Nests and Eggs. 



Oct 



Mr. Morgan's story cannot be analysed in detail as it is not given 

 in detail, so it is impossible to say more than that the account is 

 utterly unlikely and may be dismissed with the practical certainty that 

 Mr. Morgan must have been mistaken in the bird. 



Miss Cockbura's notes are, however, very full, and it is therefore 

 more easy to discuss her. opinions. As regards the first nest found the 

 evidence given is entirely that of native collectors. Now these men 

 found a nest in a clump of trees from which a supposed Hawk-Cuckoo 

 flew out. They watched it return to this nest and sit on it, and one of 

 the men fired and missed it ; it again returned and was again missed. 

 Next day the nest was not visited, but on the following one the natives 

 again went and took the nest and eggs and shot a Hawk-Ci ckoo. 



Now there is nothing to prove that the cuckoos either built the 

 nest or laid those eggs. Indeed on the first day it is quite possible that 

 the natives mistook the bird which sat on the nest and that it 

 was really a hawk, not a cuckoo at all, and this is all the more prob- 

 able Avhen we find that both nest and eggs are described as being 

 typically those of a hawk of some kind. When the cuckoo was shot 

 nothing is said about its being in or near the nest, merely that it was 

 "there," from whurh we may conclude that it was on the same or an 

 adjacent tree. The eggs are described as being " perfectly white 

 with a few touches of light brown on two of them ; they were much 



