THE KOEL. im 



" speech" is " ceaseless " enough in the season of his- 

 vocalizations, is it "bell-like"; while the Coppersmith's 

 metallic call might deserve such an epithet. I must 

 confess to being heretical about the Koel, who is 

 not as a rule a popular character with the exile 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 pleasant 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 

 somewhat monotonous diet in place of his natural 

 fare of jungle fruits. However, the birds of the 

 cuckoo family, to which he belongs, have accom- 

 modating 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's favour that after such an upbringing he- 

 F, EC 8 



