MALAYAN ORNITHOLOGY. 137 
a most peculiar, monotonous and rather plaintive cry, which I 
seldom noticed during the heat of the day, though often towards 
dusk several birds could be heard at the same time, frequently 
continuing their cries right through the night. 
Such was also the case in Hongkong, where one frequented a 
tree close to my quarters, and nightly uttered its strange notes, 
sometimes for hours without cessation. ‘These consist of a series 
of loud and very clear whistles, uttered in a descending scale, and 
terminating with a shake or trill, and are heard at regular inter- 
vals of two or three minutes. I obtained my first specimen at 
Penang during May; but its plumage was exactly similar to that 
of others which I got later in the year at Singapore. On 19th 
July, 1879, while driving along the Bukit Timah road, I heard one 
of these Cuckoos in a mangosteen orchard, and soon spied it out, 
perched among the highest branches of a clump of bamboos; so, 
dodging behind the trees, I got within shot and brought it down, 
a beautiful specimen, ¢. 
Length 8+ inches; irides and the inside of the mouth red; beak 
dusky, reddish at its base; legs yellow; head, neck, and upper tail- 
coverts pale ashy, the last approaching the dull-brown of the back 
and wings, which are very faintly glossed with metallic green; 
under parts bright rufous-brown ; tail black, but tipped and nar- 
rowly barred with white. 
EuDYNAMIS MALAYANA (Cab.). The Malayan Koel. 
During June, 1877, I shot one of these Koels near Kwala Kangsa, 
Pérak ; it was a female, with its. ovaries much developed; its 
stomach contained several large beans. Length 18 inches; irides 
crimson-lake ; legs plumbeous ; beak pale-green. 
The male is considerably smaller than the female, and quite 
unspotted, being entirely of a deep shining blue, with rich purple 
and green reflections. Late in November, 1879, I visited Pulau 
Nongsa, a small island near Singapore, barely half a mile long by 
sixty or eighty yards in breadth, in fact a mere strip of thick jun- 
gle surrounded by a broad coral strand. Hearing most strange 
mellow notes issuing from the jungle, I sent my Malay boatmen 
in to beat, and, standing outside on the beach, shot a pair of these 
Koels as they were driven cut into the open. Both were in 
