766 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVII. 



" 1 koel's 1 fresh crow's and 3 koel's. Reid argued that this went to prove 

 "that the female koel ejected the crow's eggs from the nest while depositing 

 "her own. I have an open mind on the subject, but I have never found 

 " broken eggs underneath a nest from which koel's eggs have been taken." 



The plan I adopted was to mark down all the crow's nests in the neighbour- 

 hood, send my climber up every morning, provided with a tin half full of 

 «,wdust. Every time the man visited a nest he lowered the contents in the 

 tin can to me, and I marked each egg, inscribing on it the number of the nest 

 and the date on which I first saw the egg. By so doing I thought I should 

 soon be in a position to see whether the koel ejected or destroyed any of the 

 eggs it found in the nest. Unfortunately the Punjabi boy is very inquisitive 

 and it was not long before I attracted considerable notice. The result was 

 that some of the servants' children, who lived in the compound, took to 

 climbing the trees and tampering with the nests, hence a great part of my 

 labour was lost. I shall detail in full what happened (or what I believe 

 to have happened) at each nest, and shall then set forth my inferences, and 

 leave the reader to judge for himself how far they are justified. 



Early in June I noticed that the crows were beginning to build, and, having 

 located some nests, sent my climber up every day to see how they were 

 progressing. But the effect of this was to make the crows desert the nests 

 visited and commence others. There was, in consequence, nothing left but 

 to wait until we saw a crow sitting. The crow is a very close sitter and begins 

 to incubate the moment she has laid an egg, so that I had only to look each 

 day to see whether any crow was sitting to find out whether she had com- 

 menced to lay. I then sent up my climber. The crow, having once laid, did 

 not desert, I may here say that the crows took my climber's presence very 

 calmly. In nearly every case the sitting bird flew away the moment he set 

 foot upon the trunk, and did not return until he had climbed down. Only 

 two crows made any attempt to attack him when in the tree. 



I kept a careful daily record of my doings, but a full reproduction of this 

 would prove very tedious ; I have therefore decided to take each nest in turn 

 and briefly recapitulate what happened. 



I numbered each nest in the order in which I discovered it, but shall not 

 take them in this order. I shall deal first with those that were tampered with, 

 as by so doing the reader will be in a better position to understand my infer- 

 ences. For this reason I lead off with nest No. V. 



Nest Number V. 



On June 14th, after I had finished my round of inspection, I sent my 

 climber to see whether he could find any more nests in the compound. An 

 hour later he returned with the following story :-— 



" I saw a crow's nest in a tree standing by itself. I climbed the tree and 

 found one crow's egg in it. I then went on to look for other nests. On my 

 way back I saw the crow sitting on the nest, and noticed a hen koel in a tree 

 near by. In another tree there was a cock koel. While I was looking at him 



