SHORT CUTS BY BIRDS ТО NECTARIES. 401 
(discontinuously) or punctured, in some cases right at the base, and exuding 
honey, always on the upper surface. In this case the damage could hardly 
have been inflicted from below, as the flowers near the point tended, as often 
happens, to take an upward angle. The lower flowers, protected from above 
by others, showed only five of the usual ‘accidental’ slits, most, if not all, 
on the under surfaces and not corresponding at all to the damage to the 
uppermost flowers. I could have given interesting detail at the time had 
I had leisure to write it up. The raceme is now in front of me, but the 
flowers are already so shrivelled that they are difficult to re-examine. 
* Before leaving them (on the 4th) I bared the stems of nine racemes just 
above the highest flowers out, to a sufficient distance to give a sunbird a 
a perch such as Leonotis offers. I saw 
convenient perch above the flowers 
no sunbirds at either the Aniphosia or Leonotis plants at the dam on 
the 4th or again to-day (6th)—merely a pair of bulbuls (.Pyenonotus layardi) 
on each occasion ; and I was struck by the fact that very few indeed of the 
Leonotis flowers there showed the slits that characterize nearly every flower 
on the outskirts. Evidently the dam is not frequented by any very de- 
structive individuals—a pity from the point of view of my observations on 
Kniphofia. The nine peduncles partly stripped were in three separate clumps, 
three in each, the remaining flower-heads in each clump being left intact as 
a control. 
“ This morning early I stripped three heads in another clump near which 
two sunbirds were visiting Leonotis, and went on to visit the two Kniphofia 
plants on the lower outskirts, to which I have previously referred. Both 
racemes had been broken off and were gone. І presumed Кайт» had done 
it, but 23 yards away, in a track showing baboon-spoor (apio eynocephalus, 
Geoff.), I found where one of the heads had been stripped of its flowers 
and, beside these, a baboon-dropping containing fruits of Physalis peru- 
viana, Linn., and of other species. The flowers were already too shrivelled 
to enable me to judge whether they had been sucked. 
“ At noon I definitely examined all the stripped Kniphofia heads of the 
Ath. In one clump no raceme showed damage, and it did not strike me in 
time to look at the thin papery bracts left by the removal of the flowers 
for evidence of a bird having perched there. In the next clump these 
bracts in all three racomes were in parts flattened down or otherwise dis- 
torted, indicating that the stem had been grasped. In one raceme I had 
made my opening rather high and the open flowers had not yet reached it. 
Yet even here a bud not yet quite opening had had its exposed upper 
surface severely slit. The other two racemes showed upper side damage, 
and, after examining carefully all their unstripped neighbours and finding 
that these showed no corresponding damage—merely what I have termed 
‘accidental’ damage,—I picked them and later examined them at leisure, 
as I also did the three stripped racemes of the third clump, having first 
