192 



giiig Lis name " into the coinpaiiy of Mr. Heselton's, which is 

 all I did or intended to do, that is his business and not mine; 

 and finally, to imagine that by any possible means "never" 

 cau be "exaggerated," is about as ridiculous as it would be 

 to say that one thing is " more unique " than another. 



On October 27th, (or aStli ?) 1903, Mr. Finn told me that the 

 Chinese never gave egg in any form to any of their birds, not 

 even the insectivorous ones; that all they gave was dried flies 

 and husked millet, given dry; and that what the Chinese did 

 not know about bird keeping was not worth knowing. On the 

 2Sth, I wrote to him on the subject, on the 3otli I received his 

 answer, and on the 31st I sent our then Editor the com- 

 munication emboth'ing what he had told me. This was 

 published on November X4th. Now, if I was guilty of falsifi- 

 cation, ]\Ir. Finn knew it by the I5tli at latest, for we cannot 

 suppose that a memory which is so acute as to serve him after 

 the lapse of nineteen months could possibly have failed him at 

 the end of nineteen days at the most. And this puts Mr. 

 l''inn into an even more disastrous dilemma than the one 

 which has caused this regretable dispute. lie has either been 

 my partner all along in the undesirable course of conduct of 

 which he now accuses me, by allowing me to go uncorrected 

 and even to repeat the statement on more than one subsequent 

 occasion, or else in repudiating the statement at this late hour, 

 apparently with a view of wriggling thereby out of a corner, 

 he is now guilty of something more than a mistake. But since 

 persistence in this involves an entire disregard for the reputation 

 of a man who has never sought to injure him in any waj', he 

 cannot expect me to extend any sympathy towards him in his 

 dilemma. W. Geo. CrkswiUvI^. 



THE HONEY GUIDE. 



Sir, — In answer to your Editorial Note at the foot of the 

 exceedingly interesting excerpt from Evelyn's Diary, by 

 " Corvus," in your issue of July last, I now send you an 

 extract from " Five Years Adventures in the I'ar Interior of 

 Africa," by R. Gordon Cumming. This book was first 

 published in 1850. The passage in question can be found at 

 pages 36 et seq. of the 1904 edition. 



" While actively busied with my oxen, I saw to-day for the 

 " first time, the Honey-bird. This extraordinary little bird, 

 " which is about the size of a Chaffinch, and of a light grey 

 " colour, invariably leads a person following it to a wild bee's 



