282 Rev. H. B. Tristram on the Ornithology of Palestine . 
ing with impunity, or whether a high moral sense of the 
iniquity of any evasion of parental bird-duties impelled them, 
I know not; but their persecution was unrelenting, and a most 
unquiet time the “ Long-tails” must have had of it. Their only 
revenge seemed to be to keep up as incessant a chatter themselves. 
When at peace, they were often to be seen hopping clumsily 
about in the open places with an ungainly attitude, as though 
their tails were rather too long, or at least as if they were not 
mounted high enough on their legs. 
It was not till the 2nd of May that we obtained the Spotted 
Cuckoo’s egg, when four were brought to us with three Hooded 
Crow’s eggs from the same nest in a gorge near Mount Gilead. 
One of the Cuckoo’s eggs was fresh, two others ready to hatch, 
and the fourth addled, while the Crow’s eggs had been for some 
time incubated. Thus it was evident that there must have been 
long intervals between the deposition of the Cuckoo’s eggs; and 
it is very possible that the Cuckoo may have deposited one egg- 
before any Crow’s were laid. This is exactly in accordance with 
Lord Lilford’s experience in Spain, where he took the eggs of 
Oxylophus from a nest of the Common Magpie containing no 
other eggs—and with the experience of our party in the Atlas, 
where we repeatedly found several Cuckoo’s eggs and none others 
in the nest, and were thus led to believe that it incubated its own. 
Of its parasitic habits there can now be no doubt. We did not 
find its eggs in any other nests in Palestine. At the time of 
its arrival the Jackdaws had hatched, and the Jays had not gene¬ 
rally begun to breed; and, in accordance with the observations 
of Messrs. Allen and Cochrane in Egypt, it prefers the nest of 
Corvus cornix when it can be had. On Mount Carmel, where it 
is very common, and where the Hooded Crow is not, the eggs 
wdl probably be found in the nests of Garrulus melanocephalus. 
The egg of Eudynamis orientalis, the Indian Koel, bears, as 
might be expected, considerable affinity to those of Oxylophus , 
and is generally deposited in the nest of Corvus splendens. Hr. 
Jerdon states that it in general lays only one egg in each nest, 
and mostly, but not always, destroys the eggs of the Crow at the 
time of depositing its own. In both these habits Oxylophus 
seems to differ from Eudynamis . 
