94 Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton on the 



only seen the female, having referred it to that species on 

 the strength o£ the colour of the iris. Actually it closely 

 resembles Batis capensis, from which it appears to differ 

 only in its smaller size and the colour of its irides, which in 

 the male consist, as a rule, of two rings of colour — the outer, 

 which is also usually the widest, being vermilion, and the 

 inner orange. In the female the irides are carmine or 

 crimson, usually slightly dusky in tone, owing to the 

 suffusion inwards of a brown-madder ring M'hich surrounds 

 them, and are often separated from the pupil by a fine 

 silvery line corresponding to the orange ring of the male. 

 Out of a large number of specimens secured I have only 

 once noted an iris diverging at all widely from the above. 

 This belonged to a female shot in March of this year, and 

 consisted of a dull grey ring surrounded by a narrow one of 

 dull ochreous ; but as the pupil was also somewhat obscured, 

 I judged the abei'rant coloration of the iris to have been due 

 to some defective condition of the eye. The bill and feet 

 are black. I have never found this Batis in the low veld 

 proper, but it ranged from the Jihu, where I noted it in 

 dense bush on the Zona in November, 1905, at an elevation 

 of 2000 feet, to Northern Melsetter, where I shot a male 

 at nearly 7000 feet in the Mt. Pene forest-patch on 

 September 28th, 1906. It is the commonest Flycatcher of 

 Chirinda, and may be found throughout the district in the 

 forest-patches and densely-wooded glens, and it visits our 

 homesteads to a larger extent than any of our other charac- 

 teristic forest-birds, frequently haunting clumps or planta- 

 tions of Eucalypts in pairs for days together, and visiting our 

 orchards when the peach- or orange-trees are in bloom for 

 the sake of the insects that are attracted to the blossoms. 



I have already described the nest. There is little or no 

 variation in the materials employed, but the lining of very 

 fine branching stems may be either very profuse or scanty, 

 the cup in the latter case being somewhat deeper. There 

 are two distinct types of egg — one, which I have already 

 described and have since again taken, with vandyk-brown 

 markings ; the other, of which I took a clutch in the 



