Over 2000 of these popular proverbs were collected by Richard Burton and given to the world as "Wit and Wisdom from West Africa," and a very interesting collection it is. Another good store will be found in the "Dahomey and the Dahomans" by Commander Forbes, R.N., and various missionaries have added to our fund of knowledge,[119:A] so that even stay-at-home people have abundance of interesting material brought within their ken. That unreachable date of classic folk-lore, the Greek Calends, has its quaint counterpart in the African saying, "I will pay thee when the fowls cut their teeth." A lesson on the importance of keeping up one's dignity, even in Yoruba circles, is given in the hint, "If thou husketh corn with the fowl it will not esteem thee." The animal life all around the village is naturally pressed into the service and made to contribute its share of proverb-lore. How quaintly happy, for instance, is this, "If stretching were wealth, the cat would be rich." How many a man in West Africa and elsewhere would be well content to find so easy a road to affluence. How equally happy this, "If there were no elephant in the jungle the buffalo would be a great animal"; or this, "One who has elephant's flesh does not search for crickets." What a shrewd humour again in the statement that "When the mouse laughs at the cat there is a hole near." By continuous effort much may be accomplished,[120:A] for "String added to string will bind a leopard"--a lesson taught again in this saying, "By going and coming the bird builds its nest."[120:B] How true again the statement that "One cannot deceive a baboon by tricks"; in all such he is more than one's match, and the trickster must be foiled by quite other methods. To try and outwit a knave is a hopeless task and is, moreover, bad for one's self-respect. It is well to see some return for one's outlay; it is bad enough to "buy," in English parlance, "a pig in a poke," but in Africa they carry the idea yet further and declare that "It is not well to buy the foot-prints of a bullock," while another caution as to the disposal of one's property is very aptly given in the reminder that "No one gives his pig to the hyena to keep," this keeping being in such case all too thoroughly seen to.