BIRDS -GENERAL INTKLLIGEN- E. 
315 
From this time they never missed their opportunity, and the 
entry of the geese was always looked for and invariably took 
place. On the morning after the market, early, and always on 
the proper morning, fortnightly, in they came cackling and 
gobbling in merry mood, and they never came on the wrong 
day. The corn, of course, was the attraction, but in what 
manner did they mark the time % One might have supposed 
that their perceptions were awakened on the market day by the 
smell of corn, or perhaps by the noise of the market traffic ; but 
my story is not yet finished, and its sequel is against this view. 
It happened one year that a day of national humiliation was 
kept, and the day appointed was that on which our market 
should have been held. The market was postponed, and the 
geese for once were baffled. There was no corn to tickle their 
olfactory organs from afar, no traffic to appeal to their sense of 
hearing. I think our little town was as still as it usually is on 
Sundays. . . . The geese should have stopped away ; but they 
knew their day, and came as usual. ... I do not pretend to 
remember under what precise circumstances the habit of coming 
into the street was acquired. It may have been formed by 
degrees, and continued from year to year ; but how the o) d 
birds, who must have led the way, marked the time so as to 
come in regularly and fortnightly, on a particular day of the 
week, I am at a loss to conceive. 
Livingstone’s 6 Expedition to the Zambesi, 1865,’ p. 
209, gives a conclusive account of the bird called the 
honey-guide, which leads persons to bees’ nests. 4 They 
are quite as anxious to lure the stranger to the bees’ hive 
as other birds are to draw him away from their own nests.’ 
The object of the bird is to obtain the pupae of the bees 
which are laid bare by the ravaging of the nest. The 
habits of this bird have long been known and described 
in books on popular natural history ; but it is well that 
the facts have been observed by so trustworthy a man as 
Livingstone. He adds, 4 How is it that members of this 
family have learned that all men, white and black, are fond 
of honey ? ’ We can only answer, by intelligent observa- 
tion in the first instance, passing into individual and 
hereditary habit, and so eventually into a fixed instinct. 
Brehm relates an instance of cautious sagacity in a 
pewit. He had placed some horsehair snares over its 
nest, but the bird seeing them, pushed them aside with 
