BIRDS -GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 315 



From this time they never missed their opportunity, and the 

 entry of the geese was always looked for and invariably took 

 place. On the morning after the market, early, and always on 

 the proper morning, fortnightly, in they came cackling and 

 gobbling in merry mood, and they never came on the wrong 

 day. The corn, of course, was the attraction, but in what 

 manner did they mark the time ? One might have supposed 

 that their perceptions were awakened on the market day by the 

 smell of corn, or perhaps by the noise of the market traffic ; but 

 my story is not yet finished, and its sequel is against this view. 

 It happened one year that a day of national humiliation was 

 kept, and the day appointed was that on which our market 

 should have been held. The market was postponed, and the 

 geese for once were baffled. There was no corn to tickle their 

 olfactory organs from afar, no traffic to appeal to their sense of 

 hearing. I think our little town was as still as it usually is on 

 Sundays. . . . The geese should have stopped away ; but they 

 knew their day, and came as usual. ... I do not pretend to 

 remember under what precise circumstances the habit of coming 

 into the street was acquired. It may have been formed by 

 degrees, and continued from year to year; but how the old 

 birds, who must have led the way, marked the time so as to 

 come in regularly and fortnightly, on a particular day of the 

 week, I am at a loss to concaive. 



Livingstone's 'Expedition to the Zambesi, 1865,' p. 

 209, gives a conclusive account of the bird called the 

 honey-guide, which leads persons to bees' nests. * They 

 are quite as anxious to lure the stranger to the bees' hive 

 as other birds are to draw him away from their own nests.' 

 The object of the bird is to obtain the pupae of the bees 

 which are laid bare by the ravaging of the nest. The 

 habits of this bird have long been known and described 

 in books on popular natural history ; but it is well that 

 the facts have been observed by so trustworthy a man as 

 Livingstone. He adds, ' How is it that members of this 

 family have learned that all men, white and black, are fond 

 of honey ? ' We can only answer, by intelligent observa- 

 tion in the first instance, passing into individual and 

 hereditary habit, and so eventually into a fixed instinct. 



Brehm relates an instance of cautious sagacity in a 

 pewit. He had placed some horsehair snares over its 

 nest, but the bird seeing them, pushed them aside with 



