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on the Lesser Rock-Sparroiv.


on the bushes ill the deserts, generally near water.” He further

remarks that in habits and note they resemble our House-Sparrow.


After keeping the hen for about five years, I should say

that the note was distinctly sharper and clearer than that of

Passer domesticus. It is evidently a quarrelsome bird, the dis¬

putes between it and the other hen (which from its pale huffish

eyebrow-streak is far more Weaver-like in appearance) being

frequent, and sometimes alarming.


The nest which was built in the cage was neatly formed,

externally of hay, internally of feathers and wool; and, so far

as I could judge, where nearly every egg was dropped from the

perch and smashed, the clutch consisted of from five to six


eocrc


I have now proved that the supposed young of this species

with ‘sandy buff’ eyebrow is represented by my surviving hen,

and that we either have here a case of dichroism in the same

bird, or else two races have been confounded as adult and young.

Both of my birds having been in the same cage for five years, it

is evident that age will not account for their difference in colour¬

ing. Capt. Shelley observes :—“ Were it not that the specimens

have been sexed by their collectors, one would have expected the

grey crowned birds with the rufous eyebrow and uniform backs

to have been adult males and the others adult females and

immature birds.” It was therefore no great mistake for me to

suppose the two birds to be sexes, and wonder why I could not

breed from them: however, as the fact of their being both hens

has enabled me to throw some light upon the life-history of the

species, I do not complain ; and now that Ornithologists have

decided that it is necessary to give names to subspecies, I think

these two forms will certainly need separation. The form with

the pale eyebrow must therefore stand as the P. albigularis of

Brelim.


It seems probable that my specimens were imported from

the Western, rather than the North-Eastern coast of Africa : we

see comparatively few Abyssinian types in the bird-market.


Dr. Russ says that “this bird is not rare in the trade, but

is only imported a few at a time ; as it however is neither beauti-



