NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 315 



always recovered their former station; they also adhere to the 

 rhinoceros dm-ing the night. I have often shot these animals at 

 midnight when drinking at the fountains, and the birds, imagining 

 they were asleep, remained with them till morning, and on my 

 approaching, before taking flight, they exerted themselves to their 

 utmost to awaken Chuckuroo from his deep sleep. 



GeofFroy was of opinion, and others agree with him, 

 that the Egyptian dotterell,* first described by Hassel- 

 quist, is the trochilos of Herodotus ; and it is a curious 

 instance of the perverseness of systematists, that they 

 should have pressed the last-mentioned name into their 

 service to designate those volatile animated gems -f* which 

 shoot by like meteors in that western world which was 



* Charadrius jEgyptius, Linn. Ilamet, Hippo's careful and 

 inteUigent attendant, when told what Herodotus and Aristotle had 

 stated on this subject, expressed his disbelief of the story, but said 

 he knew the bird, which he described pretty accurately, Mr. 

 Mitchell took him do\^n to the museum in the garden, when he at 

 once pointed out Hoplopterus spinnsus, a spm'-winged dotterell or 

 plover, as the bird he meant. This species, it appears, is constantly 

 found in the places where the crocodiles land, and runs about 

 hunting for insects — small moUusca, perhaps, and such things — 

 when the crocodiles are lying asleep. The appearance of the 

 hunter immediately excites a noisy note from the plover, the croco- 

 dile wakes, and the natives believe that the bird is the crocodile's 

 friend and watchman. The Sheigea Arabs call this bird El sugda : 

 the natives of Dougola call it El'um tisaad, which, being inter- 

 preted, means the cousin or niece of the crocodile. Mr. Curzon's 

 narrative leads to the inference of a much more intimate connexion 

 between the bird and the crocodile than a mere cry at the approach 

 of danger. The spur on each of the wings of hoplojiterus is nearly 

 half an inch long. The reader will remember, in one of the 

 versions of the story, the sharj? spine with which the bird is said 

 to be armed, and which" Leo places on its head. 



t The humming-birds — Trochilidce and Trochibis of modern 

 ornithologists — inhabiting America and the West India Islands. 

 Mr. Gould, with a part of whose brilliant collection the public is 

 already familiar, from the exhibition in the Zoological Society's 

 Garden in the Regent's Park, is now surpassing his other grand 

 zoological works, by the publication of the family of these ' gay 

 creatures of the element.' 



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