Select Specimens of Natural History Collected in Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile. Volume 5.Bruce, James
History
Select Specimens of Natural History Collected in Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile. Volume 5.
Bruce, James
Natural history -- Egypt; Natural history -- Ethiopia; Nile River; Plants -- Egypt; Plants -- Ethiopia; Scientific expeditions -- Egypt
To these two partners he makes his meaning equally known by the
alluring sound, as he calls it, of Tcherr Tcherr, which we may imagine,
in the Hottentot language of birds, may signify Honey; but it does not
sing, it seems, so melodiously as Jerome Lobo’s bird. I cannot for my
own part conceive, in a country where so many thousand hives of bees
are, that there was any use for giving to a bird a peculiar instinct or
faculty of discovering honey, when, at the same time, nature had denied
him the power of availing himself of any advantage from the discovery,
for man seems in this case to be made for the service of the Moroc,
which is very different from the common ordinary course of things; man
certainly needs him not, for on every tree and on every hillock he may
see plenty of combs at his own deliberate disposal. I cannot then but
think, with all submission to these natural philosophers, that the
whole of this is an improbable fiction, nor did I ever hear a single
person in Abyssinia suggest, that either this, or any other bird, had
such a property. Sparman says it was not known to any inhabitant of the
Cape, no more than that of the Moroc was in Abyssinia; it was a secret
of nature, hid from all but these two great men, and I most willingly
leave it among the catalogue of their particular discoveries.
I have only to add, that though Dr Sparman and his learned associates,
that feed upon the crumbs from other people’s tables, may call this
bird a cuckoo, still I hope he will not insist upon correcting my
mistake, as, in the article of the fennec, by ignorantly tacking to it
some idle fable of his own, that he may name it Cuculus Indicator.
SHEREGRIG.
This bird is one of those called Rollier in French, and Rollier
in English, without either nation being able to say what is its
signification in either language. In the French it is the name of a
tribe, always as ill delineated as it is described, because scarce
ever seen by those that either describe, or delineate it; in Latin it
is called Merops. Its true name, in its native country, is Sheregrig,
and by this name it is known in Syria, and Arabia, and in the low
country of Abyssinia, on the borders of Sennaar, wherever there are
meadows, or long grass, interspersed with lofty or shady trees.
[Illustration: _Sheregrig._
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789. by G. Robinson & Co._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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