172 THE CROW USED IN DIVINING EVENTS. 
that day been presented with. He, no doubt, had 
never seen the bird before, although it was shot by 
his own lake. We, of course, observed the rhinoceros- 
bird, which sits as calmly on the animal's back as a 
man does on the top of a coach ; he is the size of a 
" mina " or a blackbird, and has black wings, with a 
grey or white rump ; they are partly gregarious, three 
being seen together ; and they must feed upon the 
tics which infest the skin of the rhinoceros. Here we 
came across a new swallow skimming the grasses of 
the hillsides — black or dark-brown wings of a slate 
tinge, white belly, black ring at neck and round the 
rump, tail-feathers not forked but slightly convex, 
body sparrow-size, and not so fish-shaped as swallows 
generally are. The golden -headed and crimson- 
backed little finch perched here, as in Unyanyembe, on 
the stalks of the Indian corn near dwellings. Another 
bird had, as Speke described it, a black coat and plush 
waistcoat ; its colours harmonised beautifully with 
the tree on which it sat, a thorny species of jasmine, 
then (December) in rich pink-and- white bloom. We 
had no songsters at Karague, but we had a " bugler," 
who had one very rich note. There never were more 
than from two to four crows (handsome birds, with a 
ring of white round the neck) seen together, and the 
natives like killing them, as they eat up the red bit- 
ter sorghum, and prevent the people from sowing the 
white or sweet variety. The crow was used here by 
the sultan as supposed to be useful in divining events. 
The crops are protected from the barn-door fowl by a 
barbarous practice — the toe-nails of the fowl are cut 
off to prevent them from scratching the ground. This 
is done also in Zanzibar, but here it first attracted 
