146 
PALAWAN. 
In the case of the Phow the plumage law is reversed, and both sexes resemble their 
male parent. The Mynah is the key to this riddle : the Phow lays her eggs in the Mynah’s 
nest; the young Cuckoos being black do not differ from the young Mynahs. The Wattled 
Mynah is a glossy purple-and-black bird about the size of a Jackdaw; it nests in holes in 
old rotten trees, often in those made by Woodpeckers—consequently the first few days of 
the young Mynah’s existence are spent in the dark, and when the young Mynah appears 
for the first time in broad daylight, a glossy black beauty, a joy to her proud parents, they 
feed and assist her until she is able to look after herself. But let us suppose that, instead 
of a glossy black beauty, the Mynahs were greeted by a brown mottled arrangement; they 
would say, “ This has surely nothing to do with us ! ” and fly away, abandoning the wretched 
brown Cuckoo to die of starvation ; therefore we can now understand that the young female 
Cuckoo benefits, is protected, and probably exists by its resemblance to its male parent. 
This is a very interesting deviation from the plumage law for the benefit of a species, and 
may be caused either by the gradual survival of the darker forms of the young females, or, 
more likely perhaps, the adult female has become more divergent from the ancestral type 
than the adult male, the progenitors of Eudynamis being dark brown or blackish plumaged 
birds. 
Of course it may be argued that it is unnecessary to perpetrate such a fraud on the 
Mynah, seeing that other birds rear parasitic Cuckoos when they cannot but be aware of the 
fact that they are not their own young; the Mynah is, however, a knowing bird, and 
perhaps requires more hoodwinking. To me the plumage deviation of the female seems the 
true explanation. 
When bathing on the coast I was occasionally severely stung by a large.jelly-fish. 
Several times I noticed what looked like a small yellow ball in their inside, which on 
closer examination proved to be a small bright yellow crab, evidently living inside the 
jelly-fish as a parasite. 
After some weeks on the beach Ave returned to Taguso, expecting daily to see the 
‘Royalist.’ We had now collected all the lowland species of birds, but those of the high¬ 
lands we could not reach. In the store we were continually bothered by the Sulus, who 
wanted everything they saw. One of the Ranee’s retainers—a big ugly bearded Sulu—was 
a great nuisance ; his friendliness might be gauged by what he daily received. Through 
this man I obtained many Dusun curios, sumpitans and carved boxes, in exchange for 
beads. One day I refused him a small tin box he much wanted, so thinking he had seen 
all my belongings he kept away several days, until one of his friends saw some more beads 
in one of my boxes: in a few moments the big ugly Sulu was hovering round again, as 
friendly (1) as ever. The store-keeper, I notice, keeps an open tobacco-pouch for the Sulus, 
thus gaining a little of the goodwill of these ruffians. 
It was now getting on in the month of September ; our daily doings were so uneventful 
that I find a blank in my journal during the greater part of this month. During September 
the weather was very tempestuous, heavy clouds accompanied by rain and gales of wind set 
in from the south-west, and but for the large arrivals of northern migrants I should have 
been miserable indeed—landed here in Taguso, our food becoming daily less, most of my 
small tinned luxuries finished, little to do, and still no ‘ Royalist.’ My chief, if not only, 
