  Recent morphological studies (Telles \& Terlevich 1994) of HII galaxies, i.e.
dwarf galaxies dominated by a very luminous starburst, have indicated that
luminous HII galaxies tend to show distorted morphology suggestive of tidal
interactions triggering the present starburst while low luminosity HII galaxies
tend to be instead symmetric and regular. To check the tidal origin of the
starburst in HII galaxies, we have searched for companions in the neighbourhood
of a sample of 51 HII galaxies. We found that only 12 HII galaxies have a
neighbour within a projected distance of 1 Mpc and 250 \kmsec~ in velocity
difference, and of these 12, only 4 have a luminous (M$_B <$ --19) neighbour.
Surprisingly, isolated HII galaxies tend to be of high luminosity and disturbed
morphology while HII galaxies with neighbours tend to be low luminosity regular
HII galaxies. Furthermore, the metal abundance and the equivalent width of the
emission lines in HII galaxies do not depend on the presence of a companion.
These results are opposed to simple expectations if interaction with a bright
companion is the main mechanism triggering the starbursts. We have also found a
loose group of HII galaxies with no luminous companion. For this, there is the
additional difficulty of understanding how these starbursts are synchronized on
time scales of less than $10^7$ yrs in systems separated by $\sim$ 1-2 Mpc.
