478 XANTHOPHILUS AUREOFLAVUS 



"Iris orange yellow; bill black; feet flesh-colour" (Emin). Total length 

 5-3 inches, cultnen 0'65, wing 3'0, tail 2-0, tarsus 0'85. Pangani E. (Kirk). 

 Immature. Differs in having the forehead, crown and mantle olive 

 yellow, mottled with pale brown feathers which have dusky shaft-stripes ; 

 wing-feathers mostly dark brown with yellow outer and inner margins ; a 

 yellow eyebrow ; ear-coverts olive yellow ; cheek, chin and throat pale 

 yellow ; remainder of the underparts white mottled with yellow. Malinda 

 (Kirk). 



The Mnana Golden Weaver rauges from the Rovuma River 

 to Formosa Bay. 



This, the commonest Weaver on Zanzibar Island, is well 

 known there as the " Mnana." The type of the species is in 

 the British Museum and was wrongly supposed by Sir Andrew 

 Smith to have been a native of Sierra Leone ; it is also prob- 

 able that Dr. Peters's specimen from "Mozambique" and 

 Rlippell's, from " Nubia," really came from the Island of 

 Zanzibar, or from the neighbouring coast, as the species is 

 only positively known to inhabit a small portion of East 

 Africa. The most southern locality yet recorded for it is 

 Mtiras on the Rovuma, where it has been procured by Dr. 

 Fiilleborn, otherwise I do not find it mentioned from much 

 further south than Zanzibar Island, but is most abundant 

 there, and apparently generally distributed along the coast to 

 as far north as Formosa Bay, not extending further inland 

 than 35° B. long. According to Fischer, the nest is a small 

 oval structure, with no long entrance tube, is composed of 

 green grass and generally suspended from the under side of 

 a cocoanut palm leaf. The eggs, three to four in number, are 

 uniform pale blue, and measure on an average 0*86 X 0*58. 

 He found them commencing their nests in the early part of 

 May, and by the end of August there were only a few breeding 

 pairs left, but towards the end of November they started a 

 second breeding season. 



The name, Hyijltantornis aurea, given to this species by 



