The Hoopoe lives a good deal on the ground where it finds its chief food, which consists of beetles of various kinds, and their larvæ, caterpillars, and ants. It is especially partial to dung-beetles, and may often be seen in search of them upon the roads, where it is also fond of dusting after the manner of a Skylark. But besides picking up a great deal of food from the surface, it also probes beneath the soil where the nature of the ground admits of this, and secures many a worm and lurking grub by means of its long and slender pointed bill. It swallows a beetle or other small morsel just as the Hornbills in the Zoological Society’s Gardens swallow the grapes which are thrown to them, that is to say, it seizes it first between the tips of the mandibles, then throwing the head back suddenly, and opening the bill at the same instant, the food is jerked into the gullet with great precision, and disappears. When it seizes a worm, however, the process is somewhat different. It bruises it by beating it against the ground, pinches it all over between the mandibles, and finally swallows it lengthwise with sundry jerks of the head. In other respects, as well as in the mode of taking their food, the Hoopoes resemble the Hornbills. They build in holes of trees as the latter are known to do, and the hens sit upon the eggs without interruption until they are hatched, the males, as in the case of the Hornbills, bringing food and feeding them from the outside of the hole. The eggs, which are generally five or six in number, are elongated, nearly oval, and of a greenish grey colour. The young when first hatched are naked, but soon get covered with small blue quills from which the feathers sprout. They are unable to stand upright until nearly fledged, but crouch forward and utter a hissing noise. Their crests are soon developed, but their bills do not acquire their full length until the following year. Lord Lilford states that although the Hoopoe as a rule prefers a hole in an old ash or willow tree for nesting in, he has seen a nest on the ground under a large stone, others in holes on the sunny side of mud or brick walls, one in a fissure of limestone rock, and another in a small cavern. Dr. Carl Bolle has observed that in the Canaries, where trees are scarce, the Hoopoe breeds in holes of the stone walls and clefts of the rocks. During his residence in China, where this bird is common, Mr. Swinhoe was surprised to find that it often breeds in the holes of exposed Chinese coffins, whence the natives have a great aversion to them, branding them as “Coffin-birds;” and the Russian naturalist Pallas once found a nest of the Hoopoe, containing seven young ones nearly ready to fly, in the decomposed abdominal cavity of a dead body!