Birds of Southern Kamerun. 47 



No. 2834. $ imm. Bitye, Oct. 31, 1907. Stomacli con- 

 tainino; hard dry seeds and bits of some large insect. Iris 

 wliitisli ; feet dark. Length of culmen 17 mm. This bird 

 is greyish and monlting, the new feathers being black. 



The first three of these birds were put under Melanopterijx 

 nigerrimusm a previous paper ('The Ibis/ 1908, p. 350) ; the 

 other three have been collected since the lot reported on in 

 Dr. Sharpe's paper. 



These birds, of whicb the adults are perfectly black and 

 the young dark grey, differ from the black adult males of 

 Melanopteryx nigerrimiis as follows : — [a) In the colour of 

 the iris, which in that bird is conspicuously yellow, while 

 in these it is conspicuously whitish. This is the point that 

 I first noticed, and is what led me to note other points of 

 difference, [h) The feet of all six birds are dark or black ; 

 those of M. nigeri'imus flesh-coloured and also larger, (c) The 

 culmen is ridged and narrow in these birds ; the pits for the 

 nostrils are also very large, [d) Some of them are females, 

 Avhicli in Melanopteryx would not be black, {e) These birds 

 have non-muscular stomachs and seem to live largely on 

 insects. 



These birds differ also from the perfectly black females 

 o? Malimbus that I have found: — (a) In the whitish iris — 

 in Malimbus it is brown, so far as I have noted, and my 

 attention was particularly drawn to that point ; {b) in the 

 longer bills — note measurements above ; (c) in that some of 

 them are males. 



I make this note of these six specimens to call attention 

 to them. They do not seem to belong to any species that 1 

 know. I do not even know what genus to put them in, 

 for they have no red in their plumage, not even the males, 

 and so cannot go into Malimbus ; and they are debarred 

 from Melanopteryx by the fact that the males and females 

 are alike. Perhaps they are Alexander's Melanopteryx nuw- 

 welli from Fernando Po (' The Ibis,' 1903, p. 355). 



1354. Ploceus fusco-castaneus (Boc). 



Cinnamopteryx fusco-castaneus Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 350. 



This species seems to belong to the solitary and insect- 



