362 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVII 



incubated. The inner skin of these eggs has a greenish-blue colour.'' 

 This colour of the egg lining ■ makes it almost a certainty that these were 

 hawk's eggs of some kind. 



Miss Cockburn's next note merely refers to the finding of a similar 

 nest, empty, found later on. The nest is again described as a typical 

 hawk's nest which " appeared to be a nest that had been used for 

 several seasons," as is a custom with many of the Falconidce. Miss 

 Cockburn saw the bird near the tree, but the servant said he had seen 

 one of them sitting on the nest a few days before. Why a bird should 

 go and sit on her nest after the young were hatched and flown is 

 not easy to say, and this little touch of evidence appears to be one 

 put in by the servant to help out his previous story, instead of which 

 it merely shews that his evidence is worth very little. 



The times given — April- 11th, three eggs hard set, and May 27th, the 

 young flown — again agree with the probable dates for a hawk's breed- 

 ing arrangements, but are extremely early for a late breeding bird such 

 as all Hawk-Cuckoos seem to be. 



I fear that this account must be relegated also to the fairy books. 



Hodgson found young birds being fed by Trochalopterum nigri- 

 mentum (The Western Yellow- winged Laughing-Thrush) and Txops 

 nepale?isis (The Hoary Bar- wing). 



Col. Rattray very kindly lent me the egg he took from the nest of 

 Myiophoneus. It is a blue-green in colour like a pale egg of Garrulax 

 moniliger (The Necklaced Laughing-Thrush) or dark one of Dryonastes 

 ruficollis (The Rufous-necked Laughing-Thrush) ; it is paler also than 

 eggs of Stumopastor or Acridotheres. The shape is a long oval, 

 decidedly compressed at the smaller end, which is pointed. The 

 texture is unlike that of any other Indian cuckoo's egg, and is inter- 

 mediate again between the eggs of Dryonastes and Garrulax. It is very 

 hard, fine grained, and glossy with innumerable, almost mycroscopic, 

 corrugations and some fine longitudinal furrows. 



Dr. Col tart and I have a very large number of eggs in our collections 

 which, we believe, will eventually prove also to belong to this cuckoo 

 which are, roughly speaking, deep chocolate-brown in colour. If this 

 proves to be the case, it will be rather analogous to the pure 

 white and chocolate-pink eggs of Cuculus poliocephalus. 



My reasons for believing them to be of this species are : first and 

 principally, by the process of elimination they can be no other cuckoo. 



