910 A Monograph of the Indian and [No. 130. 



dulating dusky bars; belly, flanks, and under tail-coverts, white, with 

 similar cross-bars more scanty on the last; some of the tibial feathers 

 shewing traces of rufous, but otherwise white barred with dusky : the 

 legs appear to have been dusky-yellowish. Two other presumed females 

 agree better with General Hardwicke's figure, except that their colour- 

 ing is not so rufous, but more ferruginous, and their markings gene- 

 rally somewhat finer : both have the entire under-parts deeply tinged 

 with dingy ferruginous, a little albescent on the belly and lower tail- 

 coverts ; their upper tail-coverts and rump have very numerous cross- 

 bands, as likewise the occiput ; and the tail has as many as fifteen 

 bars, the same as in the female Coel. The immature plumage of the 

 young male before noticed, as killed while in moult, has the barring of 

 the upper-parts of a more mottled character, the ferruginous tint 

 paler, and the nestling feathers retained on the under-parts are band- 

 ed pretty much as in the last described females ; its new tail-feathers 

 resemble those of the adult male, while the only one left of the 

 nestling series (being the penultimate) is rufous, crossed with twelve 

 or thirteen dusky bars. 



The points of resemblance between this bird and the common large 

 Coel (Eudynamys orientalis) are worthy of being noticed; viz. 1. 

 the crimson irides, — 2. the sexual diversity of plumage, which I 

 suspect to be constant, — 3. the uniform dark colouring of the male, — 

 and 4. the nakedness of the tarse, wherein it differs from all the 

 foregoing species ; while the number of caudal bars in, at least, the 

 younger females is a further token of this affinity, and C. hono- 

 ratus would seem to be intermediate. Latham's description of his 

 male C. niger is sufficiently accurate, except that he assigns an 

 orange colour to the bill ; but his female does not accord with any 

 specimen which I have seen. This is described by him as having "a 

 pale bill; is brown above, spotted with white; head striped white 

 and brown, over the eye a white streak ; under-parts white, with 

 irregular brown spots ; thigh-feathers long, barred with brown ; tail 

 cuneiform, brown, crossed with fourteen or fifteen whitish bars, the 

 tip fringed with white ; legs pale blue." 



From what I can learn, this Cuckoo appears to be not a rare bird 

 in Bengal, though I have hitherto succeeded in procuring but one 



