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 Indicator[81]. 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.
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.
Sheregrig.
London Publish’d Dec.r 1.st 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.
There are two different kinds of this bird in Syria considerably varying in colours, the brown of the back being considerably darker in that of the Syriac, and the blue much deeper, chiefly on its wings; the back of the head, likewise brown, with very little pale-blue throughout any part of it, and wanting the two long feathers in the tail. It is a fly-catcher, or bee-eater, of which these long feathers are the mark. It is said by Dr Shaw, and writers that have described it, to be of the size of a jay, to which indeed the Syrian bird approaches, but this before us seems the least of his kind, and weighs half an ounce more than a blackbird. It is consequently true, as Dr Shaw, says, that it has a smaller bill than a jay, because the bird itself is smaller, neither is there any disproportion in the length of its legs. Shaw says, it is called Shagarag, which, he imagines, by a transmutation of letters, to be the same with Sharakrak of the Talmudists, or Shakarak of the Arabian authors, and is derived from sharak, to shriek or squall.