2 BULLETIN 208, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



there was more to it than just the matter of food-getting. Obviously, 

 the only valid approach to the problem was to start at the beginning 

 and to assemble sufficient, reliable, basic descriptive data to enable 

 us to draw a truer picture and to rephrase the questions arising from it. 



Similarly, it was impossible to compare the parasitic breeding habits 

 of the honey-guides with those of the cowbirds, cuckoos, and other 

 brood parasites until more information was available. It was essential 

 to make such comparisons, and hence it was necessary to find out more 

 about the honey-guides. 



In the pages that follow I have brought together all that is known 

 of these birds from the literature, from museum specimens, from the 

 unprinted observations of many naturalists in Africa, and from my 

 own personal field studies. If at times it may seem that unnecessary 

 detail has been set forth I would remind the reader that our studies 

 are still in the fact-finding stage, and that some of these possibly 

 tedious minutiae may turn out to be revealing and significant in the 

 light of further data on the one hand, and, on the other, may help to 

 quahfy or to support some of the statements derived from them and 

 other similar crumbs of evidence. Tiiroughout, every effort has been 

 made to integrate all available knowledge, even when that integration 

 is still on the merely suggestive level. In a field where the gaps in 

 knowledge and in the evidence are so numerous, it seems better to 

 venture occasionally with an interpretation or an opinion not yet 

 wholly provable by the actual data than to follow the safer, but 

 intellectually sterile, course of attempting to understand nothing 

 because it is not yet possible to understand all. In each of these 

 ventures I have tried to point out clearly that the interpretations are 

 tentative, and quite possibly of more temporary than permanent 

 validity. I consider them important and useful because they wiU 

 serve to direct further inquiries and to arouse more searching question- 

 ings. Also, since few of the naturalists resident in Africa and the 

 appropriate parts of Asia have the chance to know the species of the 

 family not found m their own special areas, they are not in a position 

 to apply the data on one or two species to the problems arising from 

 other related forms elsewhere except through the medium of a com- 

 prehensive and integrated report. 



