I have already said in the introduction which immediately precedes the history of birds, that among those that live upon insects there are some that attach themselves to flies in general, and others that seem to live upon bees alone: Of this last sort is the bird now before us. I never saw him in the low country where the fly is, nor indeed anywhere but in the countries where honey is chiefly produced as revenue, such as the country of the Agow, Goutto, and in Belessen.

He seems to pursue the bees for vengeance or diversion as well as for food, as he leaves a quantity of them scattered dead upon the ground without seeking further after them, and this pastime he unweariedly pursues without interruption all the day long; for the Abyssinians do not look so near, or consider things so much in detail, as to imagine all the waste which he commits can make any difference in their revenue.

His name is Maroc, or Moroc, I suppose from Mar, honey, though I never heard he was further concerned in the honey than destroying the bees. In shape and size he seems to be a cuckoo, but differs from him in other respects. He is drawn here of his natural size, and in all respects so minutely attended to, that I scarcely believe there is a feather amissing.

The opening of his mouth is very wide when forced open, reaching nearly to under his eyes. The inside of his mouth and throat are yellow, his tongue sharp-pointed. It can be drawn to almost half its length out of its mouth beyond the point of its beak, and is very flexible. Its head and neck are brown, without mixture. It has a number of exceeding small hairs, scarcely visible at the root of his beak. His eye-brows are black likewise. His beak is pointed, and very little crooked; the pupil of his eye is black, surrounded with an iris of a dusky dull red. The fore part of his neck is light-yellow, darker on each side than in the middle, where it is partly white; the yellow on each side reaches near the shoulder, or round part of the wing; from this his whole bread and belly is of a dirty white to under the tail; from this, too, his feathers begin to be tipt gently with white, as are all those that cover the outside of his wing; but the white here is clear, and the size increases with the breadth and length of the feathers. The large feathers of his wing are eight in number, the second in size are six. The tail consists of twelve feathers; the longest three are in the middle, they are closely placed together, and the tail is of an equal breadth from top to bottom, and the end of the feathers tipt with white. Its thighs are covered with feathers of the same colour as the belly, which reach more than half way down his leg; his legs and feet are black, marked distinctly with scales. He has two toes before and one behind, each of which have a sharp and crooked claw. I never saw his nest; but in flying, and while sitting, he perfectly resembles the cuckoo. I never heard, nor could I learn from any others, that he had any voice or song. He makes a sharp, snapping noise, as often as he catches the bees, which is plainly from closing his beak.

Jerome Lobo, whom I have often mentioned, describes this bird, and attributes to him a peculiar instinct, or faculty of discovering honey; he says, when this bird has discovered any honey he repairs to the high-way, and when he sees a traveller, he claps with his wings, sings, and by a variety of actions invites him to follow him, and flying from tree to tree before him, stops where the honey is discovered to be, and there he begins to sing most melodiously.

The ingenious Dr Sparman could not omit an opportunity of building a story upon so fair a foundation. He too gives an account of a cuckoo in size and shape resembling a sparrow, and then gives a long description of it in Latin, from which it should not resemble a sparrow. This he calls Cuculus Indicator81. It seems it has a partition treaty at once both with men and foxes, not a very ordinary association.

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.