PARASITIC HABITS OF TEE INDIAN KOEL. 777 



got up he found that this was in a dying state ; it had been savagely pecked by 

 the scandalised crows. He removed it, and it shortly afterwards died in his 

 hand. He preserved it in spirit. 



Since making the above observations I have beenTeading Leverkiihn's Fremde 

 Eier in Nest, and I find that some German observers have performed similar ex- 

 periments with various species of crows. The results of their observations may 

 be of interest. 



In 1788 Kohne replaced four crow's eggs by four of the smallest fowl's eggs 

 he could find, which he coloured to make them resemble crow's eggs. He 

 saw the crow sitting daily. On the 22nd day he noticed that she was sitting 

 on the outermost branch of the tree and regarding the nest apparently with 

 astonishment. Then Kohne noticed a young white chicken (a cock) running 

 about under the tree, the other three chickens were in the nest. Kohne repeat- 

 ed the experiment next year with similar results. 



Brehm placed a pebble stone in a crow's nest which she sat upon along with 

 Tier egg. 



Mathes placed fowl's eggs in a crow's nest and states that when the first 

 ohicken appeared and began to cheep, the crow fled in terror and did not again 

 return to the nest. 



Shramm substituted three fowl's eggs for five eggs of Corvus comix, the 

 crow promptly ate them up. He then coloured his fowl's eggs to resemble 

 •crow's ; the crow hatched these out, but devoured the chickens immediately 

 upon their appearance. He performed a similar experiment with magpies ; but 

 they reared up the young chickens. 



Leverkiihn relates several instances of owls and birds of prey hatching out 

 fowl's eggs and rearing up the chickens. According to him a kite in the Zoo 

 at Zittan laid forty-one eggs between 1851 and 1868, for these sixty-nine 

 fowl's eggs were substituted, and of these fifty-three were hatched out and 

 the young successfully reared. 



Nest Number IX. 

 On the 19th June my climber discovered this nest, it then contained one 

 ■crow's egg and one koel's. On the 20th a second crow's egg was added, on the 

 21st a third, and a fourth on the 22nd, so that the nest now contained one 

 koel's egg and four crow's eggs. No change took place in the contents of the 

 nest until the 28th, when the young koel hatched out. On the 29th a crow 

 hatched out, and to my astonishment a second crow emerged on 30th, i.e., 

 ten days after the egg was laid. By July 18th the third crow had hatched 

 out and the fourth by July 2nd, so that these eggs appear to have incubated 

 in ten days instead of fifteen or sixteen, the usual time. Either the crow laid 

 -special patent fast-hatching eggs or someone must have been playing the fool 

 with the nest by putting in it day by day eggs from another nest four or five 

 days after they were laid. I do not know whether the period of incubation 

 can be materially shortened by very close sitting. Thus on July 2nd the nest 

 oontained a young koel and four young crows. On July 5th I visited the nest 



