2-1-54 THE INDICATOR. There is a bird in the interior of Africa, whose habits would rather seem to belong to the interior of Fairy-land: but they have been well authenticated. It indicates to honey hunters where the nests of wild bees are to be found It calls them with a cheerful cry, which they answer; and on finding itself recognised, flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey. While they are occupied in collecting it, the bird goes to a little distance, where he observes all that passes; and the hunters, when they have helped themselves, take care to leave him his portion of the food. This is the CUCULUS INDICATOR of Linnæus, otherwise called the Moroc, Bee Cuckoo, or Honey Bird. There he arriving round about doth flie, No. I.-WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13th, 1819. DIFFICULTY OF FINDING A NAME FOR A WORK OF THIS KIND. NEVER did gossips, when assembled to determine the name of a new-born child, whose family was full of conflicting interests, experience half the difficulty which an author finds in settling the title for a periodical work. There is generally some paramount uncle, or prodigious third cousin, who is silently understood to have the chief claims, and to the golden lustre of whose face the clouds of hesitation and jealousy gradually give way. But these children of the brain have no godfather ready at hand: and then their single appellation is bound to comprise as many public interests as all the Christian names of a French or a German prince. It is to be modest: it is to be expressive: it is to be new: it is to be striking it is to have something in it equally intelligible to a man of plain understanding, and surprising for the man of imagination: -in one word, it is to be impossible. How far we have succeeded in the attainment of this happy nonentity, we leave others to judge. There is one good thing however which the hunt after a title is sure to realize;-a good deal of despairing mirth. We were visiting a friend the other night, who can do any thing for a book but give it a title; and after many grave and ineffectual attempts to furnish one for the present, the company, after the fashion of Rabelais, and with a chair-shaking merriment which he might have joined in himself, fell to turning a hopeless thing into a jest. It was like that exquisite picture of a set of laughers in Shakspeare : 010 One rubbed his elbow, thus; and fleered, and swore ned That in this spleen ridiculous, appears, LOVE'S LABOUR LOST. 4th Edition. |