FRENCH CAMEROONS 167 
to the waist, and displayed their figures to advantage as they 
walked along carrying their wares in baskets on their heads. It is 
surprising how quickly one becomes inured to such an array of 
naked flesh, but no one with an eye could fail to remark how 
much more beautiful a native girl is in this simple attire than in 
the sloppy get-up planted on their more sophisticated sisters by 
well-meaning Europeans. 
As time went on and I became known farther and farther afield, 
more and more children, and even women, arrived with baskets 
of birds, and so some rare and interesting species came into my 
hands that I could never have captured myself during a limited 
period. Included in these were several species of Malimbus 
Weavers, which are denizens of the forest. They are insect-eating 
weavers feeding solely in the trees, and have black and red in the 
plumage. That the red is an ancestral character is shown by the 
fact that even the young have this coloration—a most unusual 
thing in birds. 
The most beautiful seed-eating bird brought to me was one with 
an enormously thick bill known as the Black-bellied Seed-cracker. 
Certainly its bill was powerful enough to crack almost any seed, 
judging by the facility with which it drew blood when being 
handled. Its head and neck were crimson and shone like silk; its 
breast was also of this color but not shiny, and the rest of the 
plumage black. 
Speaking of powerful bills reminds me also of a Fiery-breasted 
or Gladiator Bush-shrike that was brought in. He lives in the 
forest undergrowth and with his cruel beak, terminating in a 
pronounced sharp-pointed hook, he catches all sorts of insects such 
as beetles, grasshoppers and frogs. 
Besides getting the largest species of sunbird—the Superb—I 
was fortunate in capturing one specimen of the Tiny Sunbird, 
which is the smallest of the African species. It so resembles one of 
the common kinds that I had to examine these carefully before 
liberating surplus specimens, and in the end was delighted to get 
this one, which was the first ever kept in captivity. 
The rarest and most beautiful of the small seed-eating birds 
were some I captured myself. These were tiny birds mainly green 
