Habits of the Honey-bird. 287 
of ‘The Ibis’ the following extract from Mr. Sandeman’s 
‘Hight Months in an Ox-Waggon,’ in which the story of this 
bird’s strange achievements is well and graphically told. The 
scene of the adventure was near Loses Kop, in the Trans- 
vaal, to the east of the Lydenberg (where the road to Delagoa 
Bay descends from the Berg into the Low Country, or Bush- 
Veldt), in June 1878.—Epp.] 
A sMALL grey bird, with a reddish beak, the size of a Spar- 
-row, had flown alongside and round the waggon for the last 
mile of our trek, making a shrill hissing cry, and sometimes 
almost flying in the faces of the drivers ; and I noticed that 
.the boys were regarding it with peculiar attention, and talk- 
-ing among themselves in reference to it. 
On asking what caused the unusual interest of the boys in, 
to all appearance, a very common-place little bird, it was 
explained that this little insignificant visitor was the far- 
famed Honey-bird. Often and often had we heard tales of 
its marvellous instinct in pointing out the nests of wild honey, 
but we had always received them with a considerable portion 
of disbelief as traveller’s tales. 
As soon as the oxen were outspanned and the boys at liberty, 
three of them, armed with buckets, spades, and hatchets, set 
off towards the bird, which had flown to a neighbouring tree 
as soon as it perceived that our attention was successfully 
attracted. A. and myself, to whom it was as strange an ad- 
venture as it was novel, accompanied the boys. As soon as 
we reached the tree the little fellow had perched on, it flitted 
.to the next, and then on again when we came up. Once it 
took such a long flight that we were unable to follow it. 
The bird, however, after waiting for us a short time in 
vain, came flying back, uttering its shrill cry to let us know 
its whereabouts. 
As if it had been warned by this not to proceed too far 
ahead of us, our guide now took very short flights, and, if 
there was no tree to rest on, took short circles in the air until 
we came up to him. 
For nearly a mile this was kept up, and as the way grew 
more difficult and the bushes more dense, our own faith in 
