APPENDIX. 181 



from which it mould not refemble a fparrow. This he calls 

 Cuculus Indicator *. It feems it has a partition treaty at 

 once both with men and foxes, not a very ordinary aflbcia- 

 tion. 



To thefe two partners he makes his meaning equally 

 known by the alluring found, as he calls it, of Tcherr 

 Tcherr, which we may imagine, in the Hottentot lan- 

 guage of birds, may fignify Honey ; but it does not fing, 

 it feems, fo melodioufly as Jerome Lobo's bird. I cannot 

 for my own part conceive, in a country where fo many 

 thoufand hives of bees are, that there was any ufe for 

 giving to a bird a peculiar inftinct or faculty of difcovering 

 honey, when, at the fame time, nature had denied him the 

 power of availing himfelf of any advantage from the dis- 

 covery, for man feems in this cafe to be made for the fer^ 

 vice of the Moroc, which is very different from the common 

 ordinary courfe of things ; man certainly needs him not, 

 for on every tree and on every hillock he may fee plenty of 

 combs at his own deliberate difpofal. I cannot then but think, 

 With all fubmifiion to thefe natural philofophers, that the 

 whole of this is an improbable fiction, nor did I ever hear a 

 fingle perfon in Abyfllnia fuggeft, that either this, or any 

 other bird, had fuch a property. Sparman fays it was not 

 known to any inhabitant of the Cape, no more than that of 

 the Moroc was in Abyilinia ; it was a fecret of nature, hid 

 from all but thefe two great men, and I moll willingly 

 leave it among the catalogue of their particular discover- 

 ies. 



Bbs I have 



jparman's voyage, vol. 11. p, 192, 



