THE HONEY-GUIDES 31 



of an African forest, and may cause reactions and stimuli on the part 

 of small birds similar to those that are otherwise provoked by the 

 passage of a lion through the grass or the presence of a leopard crouch- 

 ing in a tree. He thinks that the beehive represents, ab initio, some- 

 thing in addition to, and different from, food m the form of honey and 

 comb. Just what it represents he prefers not to say in the absence of 

 fuller information, but he definitely relates the guiding to bees' nests 

 to the fact that the guide sometimes may lead one to a wild beast. 



In view of the fact that Toschi's discussion remains on a very 

 conjectural plane it is not possible to criticize it in detail. His attempt 

 to reduce the seeming uniqueness of the guiding habit in birds is 

 laudable in intent but it cannot be called successful unless one is 

 willing to go along with him on the intangible assumption that the 

 beehive had another meaning than as a source of food, but with this 

 "other meaning" left undefined and undescribed. Some years earlier 

 than Toschi another Italian naturalist, Fossati (1936), made a similar 

 attempt to reduce guiding to a common denominator with alarm 

 reactions, likewise overlooking the fact that if it were to be so inter- 

 preted we would have to accept the difficult pictm-e of a bird giving a 

 specialized alarm reaction concerning an object it cannot see and 

 whose position may even be unknown to it at the time. 



Native legends 



While no serious attempt has been made to collect native legends 

 about honey-guides (apparently they chiefly concern one species, the 

 greater honey-guide), the following few may give some idea of their 

 variety. 



Natives often make use of the fact that very occasionally a honey- 

 guide may appear to lead to a dangerous animal instead of a bees' 

 nest, to impute a revenge motive to the bird. This has given rise to a 

 variety of proverbs, such as: 



If you do not leave anything for the guide, it will lead you to a 

 dangerous animal the next time. 



If you do not leave anything for the guide, it will not lead you at 

 all in the future. 



If you do not leave anything for the guide, it will come to you and 

 chatter when you are stalking game, and thus reveal j^our presence 

 to the intended quarry. 



A contrary proverb says in effect that if you give the bird too much 

 food it will not guide again for such time as the food supply lasts, and 

 that, therefore it is unwise to leave much for it. 



A peculiar attempted explanation of the guiding habit is to be 

 found in a Rhodesian native fable (J. D. Roberts, African (^Rhodesian) 

 Fables). It appears that once upon a time a honey-guide came upon 



