234 BULLETIN 2 08, LTNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



My colleague, Archibald G. Wenley, Director of the Freer Gallery 

 of Art in Washington, has kindly searched the old Chinese literature 

 in my behalf and has translated the following from the "T'ai-ping-yii- 

 lan," a great 80-volume encyclopedic work compiled by Imperial 

 command by Li Fang and his coworkers and completed in 983. This 

 work quotes the third-century account of Chang Hua more fully than 

 does Read, as the following extract shows. 



It also says in many distant countries there are secluded places in the mountain 

 districts which produce beeswax. These beeswax places are all abrupt cliffs and 

 rock walls which are unclimbable, and only by raising baskets to the top of the 

 mountain and lowering them to the bottom is it obtained. When the bees leave 

 not to return, the surplus hives and wax on the rocks are unlimited. There is a 

 bird small in shape as a sparrow. It comes in flocks of thousands to peck at it. 

 By spring all is used up and the place is as if it had been scrubbed and washed. 

 In spring the bees all return to the clean place just as before. Year by year it is 

 like this without any confusion. People also note these smooth places. They 

 call them (the birds) wax honey birds, and call them spiritual sparrows (because) 

 they are entirely unable to catch them. 



There can be little doubt that the wax-eating bird is the Himalayan 

 honey-guide; at least it is the only bird in the area known to eat bee 

 comb. The size of the flocks is undoubtedly exaggerated and this 

 discrepancy need not be taken too seriously. It follows that 1,700 

 years ago the Chinese scholars had heard of the wax-eating habit of a 

 bird they had never seen themselves, a bird that remained unknown 

 to the Western World for nearly 16 centuries longer, and of whose 

 wax-eating habits we have only become aware in the last few j^^ears. 

 There is even a curious parallel between the old Chinese appellation 

 "spiritual sparrow" and Humes' subgeneric one, "Pseudofringilla," 

 proposed for this bird some 30 years after Blyth first made it known. 



Miscellaneous Behavior 



Like the common African indicators, this one also sits in an erect 

 attitude, apparently in a shaded perch by preference (Smythies, 

 1949); its posture is described by Magrath (1909), however, as "very 

 dove like. It sits with head sunk on breast, feathers rather puffed 

 out and wings drooping so as to display the vivid yellow patch down 

 the lower back." This is quite reminiscent of the hunched-up pose 

 assumed by Indicator variegatus and /. maculatus. 



The flight is described as heavy and dipping, "like the larger and 

 more clumsy Barbets" (Baker, 1927). 



Magrath records seeing one of these birds bathing in a small stream. 



