cuckow. 275 



gloss ; neck, and under parts dark ash-colour ; tail five inches and 

 a half long, cuneiform, with a gloss of blue in some lights ; quills 

 dusky, reaching almost one-fourth on the tail ; legs lead-colour. 

 Inhabits Sierra Leona. — From Mr. Woodford's drawings. 



16.— SACRED CUCKOW. 



Cuculus honoratus, Ind. Om. i. 214. Lin. i. 169. Gm. Lin.'i. 413. Gen. Zool. ix. 



p. 104. pi. 21. 

 Cuculus Malabaricus naevius, Bris. iv. 136. pi. xi. A. fig. 2. Jd.8vo.ii. p. 79. 

 Cuil, Buf. vi. 375. Ess. Philos. p. 6S. 

 Coucou tachete de Malabar, PL enl. 294. 

 Sacred Cuckow, Gen. Syn. ii. 526. 



LENGTH twelve inches. Bill stout, not much curved, and 

 black; plumage above blackish ash, each feather marked with a 

 spot of white ; beneath white, transversely spotted with ash-colour ; 

 quills ash, spotted in the same manner with white ; tail much 

 cuneated, five inches and a half long, the outer feather only three 

 inches, dusky, bounded with white ; legs short, pale ash-colour. 



Inhabits Malabar, and is there said to be held in veneration by 

 the natives ; feeds on reptiles, which probably are such as are most 

 noxious ; and if so, this seeming superstition will have a more 

 reasonable foundation than may be at first imagined. 



It should appear, from M. Levaillant quoting No. 294 of the 

 PI. enl. as a synonym to his Coucou tachirou, that he esteems one 

 and the other to be the same ; and if so, the two birds may probably 

 differ merely from age ; and more so, as the whole we know of the 

 one last described is from a drawing of M. Le Poivre, from which 

 alone Brisson appears to have taken his description. 



M. Levaillant mentions a bird, which he supposed to be a Cuckow, 

 in his journey across the Candeboo, which was almost entirely of a 



N»2 



