VI BULLETIN 2 08, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Latimer of the East London Museum, C. J. Skead of the Kaffrarian 

 Museum, King William's Town, Mrs. T. Campbell of the Transvaal 

 Museum, Pretoria, R. H. N. Smithers of the National Museum 

 of Southern Rhodesia, Bulawayo, and Mrs. Goodall of the Queen 

 Victoria Memorial Museum, Salisbury. 



In the United States the authorities of the great museums of New 

 York (J. P. Chapin and D. Amadon), Chicago (A. L. Rand), Cam- 

 bridge (the late J. L. Peters), Pittsburgh (W. E. C. Todd), PhUadel- 

 phia (R. M. de Schauensee), and Cleveland (H. C. Oberholser) have 

 generously loaned honey-guide material for study. 



In this connection it is only just to make particular mention of 

 the helpful and critical cooperation given by James P. Chapin, our 

 leading expert on African birds. He not only went over much of the 

 material with me but read the entire manuscript of this report, 

 in sections as they were written, and has generously made suggestions 

 and corrections which have improved it greatly. For many years Dr. 

 Chapin has been stimulating people in the Belgian Congo and West 

 Africa generally to study the elusive, mysterious l3rre-t ailed honey- 

 guide, and has intended to write a special paper on this bird. It is 

 a great pity that pressure of other work has kept him from doing so, 

 as it would have given a better presentation of this species than I 

 have been able to piece together from the published literature. The 

 inclusion of the observations of Rougeot and Sabater, the latter hither- 

 to unpublished, is largely due to Chapin's tireless, stimulating in- 

 fluence. 



Mr. T. Harrisson, of the Kuching Museum, has kindly written me 

 of his experiences with the Malayan honey-guide in Borneo, and Dr. 

 Dillon Ripley of Yale University has sent me for study the body of 

 an orange-rumped honey-guide which he collected in Assam. 



The problems raised by wax digestion in these birds have led me 

 into the fields of bacteriology and biochemistry where I have had to 

 rely for assistance on several experts who were land enough to interest 

 themselves in this matter. Dr. W. W. G. Biittiker, formerly of Salis- 

 bury, Southern Rhodesia, supplied me with live cultures of intestinal 

 bacteria from Indicator indicator that were studied for me by Dr. Joel 

 Warren and Maj. Ray Cowley of the Department of Bacteriology of 

 the U. S. Army Medical Service Graduate School. The chemical 

 analyses of wax from wild bee comb and from the gizzard and various 

 parts of the intestinal tract of two species of honey-guides were made 

 for me by Dr. Albin H. Wartli, an eminent industrial chemist inter- 

 ested in waxes and wax technology and chemical director of the 

 Crown Cork and Seal Company in Baltimore, and by Dr. F. P. 

 Veitch, professor of physiological chemistry at the University of 



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