414 МВ. С. Е. М. SWYNNERTON ON 
experience of the intelligence and reasoning power of birds leads me to agree 
that this is exceedingly possible. Still, the Tits may themselves be nectar- 
eaters, as are, to a very marked extent, their cousins the White-eyes. 
Should we, on the other hand, discuss not puncturing but the origin of 
the nectar-eating habit generally in birds, I think it will be admitted that it 
may well have arisen, in the first instance, as a result of following insects 
into flowers or picking them, drowned, out of the nectar, and so tasting the 
latter incidentally. 
Dr. Lowe observes that Phylloscopus merely utilizes the damage inflicted by 
others, and quotes an exceedingly interesting observation by Mr. N. B. Moore 
in the Bahamas, from ‘Nature, April 25th, 1878, p. 509. The original note 
(which I have alone looked up, Proc. Boston Soc. N. H. xix. р. 245) may be 
summarized as follows :—A species of woodpecker (Picus varius, Linn.) was 
in the habit of extracting sap from а logwood sapling—* whose juice is very 
sweet, quite honey-like "—Aand other birds ( Certhiola flaveola (Linn.), Dendræca 
tigrina (Gmel.) Baird, and a species of Anolis, regularly, and Dendraca 
coronata (Linn.) Gray, occasionally, also other individuals of Picus varius) 
were observed from Dec. 17th to Feb. 3rd to follow and utilize the wood- 
pecker’s *sap-pits." The Certhiola, moreover (as said to have been originally 
observed by Dr. Bryant), reaches the nectaries at the bases of the flowers of 
Vereia crenata, Andr. [ = Kalanchoë Afzeliana, Britten] by means of short 
cuts through the corolla. Before being pierced, the flowers’ nectaries were 
found never to contain insects ; but small black ants and very small winged 
insects soon found and entered the openings. 
This utilization—certainly intelligent utilization in the case of birds— 
of the work of others is of course by no means uncommon in nature. To 
mention only one or two of various instances that happen to have come 
under my own observation : there are the Charaves and other frugivorous 
insects that freely utilize the damage done to fruit by birds, Cetoniid:e, 
Trypetidæ, &e., and the birds that use other animals as “ beaters.” The 
large mixed bird-parties met with in tropical countries are a case in point ; 
and amongst simpler cases that have come under my own observation have 
been persistent attendance (for the insects put up) by a bulbul (Pycnonotus 
layardi, Gurney) оп a flock of waxbills (Æstrilda astrilda (Linn.) Sharpe) 
that were searching for seeds, by bee-eaters (Merops apiaster, Linn.) on a 
number of bulbuls (P. layardi) that were busy at fruit, and by drongos 
(Dicrurus ludwigi (Smith)), cuckoo-shrikes (Graucalus cersius (Licht.)), and 
other birds on monkeys (Cercopithecus albogularis var. beirensis, Рос.) that 
were swinging idly along in the tree-tops. 
It is interesting to find that Dr. Lowe's hive-bees, like mine, utilized 
openings made by birds to the exclusion of the natural openings as soon as 
the former became available ; and of still greater interest is what looks like 
