FROM THE SULYMAH RIVER. :27 



of specimens representing a very interesting transitional 

 stage of plumage, analogous in its development to that 

 described in the preceding species. The adult, males as 

 well as females are easily recognized by the red lower throat 

 and chest, while the rest of the plumage is sooty black, 

 with broad glossy edgings to the feathers on the upper 

 surface. One of these specimens, probably the youngest, 

 has the whole chin , throat and chest , and also the centre 

 of the crown entirely red, while the rest of the head is 

 intermixed with red feathers. Another specimen has the 

 chin already black , but still intermixed with red , while 

 numbers of red feathers are found between the black plu- 

 mage of the crown and the sides of the head, and some 

 of the feathers on the breast are broadly tipped with brownish 

 red. A third specimen , still nearer the adult stage , has 

 the chin entirely black, but the black crown and sides of 

 head show some sparsely distributed red feathers. The first 

 specimen here described , with the entirely red chin and 

 throat , has moreover a small spot of white feathers on the 

 breast, and the same is the case, even in a much higher 

 degree, with the fully adult specimen mentioned in my 

 first paper on Liberian birds (N. L. M. 1885, p. 196). 



The young bird is smoky brown with the shield on the 

 chest dark fulvous, intermixed with young glossy red feathers, 

 which also make their appearance on the head. 



66. Malimbus scutatus (Cass.). 



This species, easily distinguished from all its congeners 

 by its scarlet under tail-coverts , is represented by a single 

 specimen in that peculiar transitional stage of plumage, 

 upon which Capt. Shelley , Ibis, 1887, p. 41, pi. II, based 

 his Malimbus rubropersonatus , a species which afterwards 

 is recognized as an immature specimen of M. scutatus and 

 reunited with this latter by Dr. Sharpe in his Catalogue of 

 Birds, Vol. XIII, p. 482. But while the above mentioned 

 coloured plate of Capt. Shelley's does perfectly agree with 

 one of our birds from the Gold Coast, the specimen from 

 the Sulymah River, which is a female, has the red feathers 



Notes from the Leyden Museum, Vol. XIV. 



