FISCUS MACKINNONI 243 
tion obtained a considerable number of examples on the 
eastern slopes of that mountain from an elevation of 6,000 ft 
up to the forest line. To the north-east of the Victoria 
Nyanza, the species was discovered at Bugemaia on the 
confines of the Kavirondo country by Mr. Jackson, who has 
since met with the same bird in the Nandi country. 
This is a very remarkable Shrike in its colouring, the 
crown and back being grey, coupled with the quills being 
entirely black and the females being distinguishable by 
having a chestnut patch on the flanks. It forms a connecting 
link between Fiscus and Corvinella, in the absence of white 
on the primaries, and in the colouring of the rump and upper 
tail-coverts being like that of the crown and hind neck. 
while the grey and black of the upper parts give it a 
resemblance to Lanius. 
Mr. Bates tells us that it is known as the “ Asanze” or 
“Asese”? in Camaroon. “It spends most of its time sitting 
motionless, but in plain sight on a twig or on a bush in 
a clearing. Sometimes it is seen to pounce suddenly down 
on the ground, probably to catch an insect or a frog, for 
I have found frog’s bones in the stomach of one. I have 
never seen it in the forest.” He subsequently adds, that 
though usually silent and morose, when the right mood comes 
it is a sweet singer. Its notes are slow and scattering but 
varied and sweet, and it introduces clever imitations of other 
birds. Mr. Bates suspects that it is a “ butcher bird,” as he 
once found the partially eaten body of a young bird impaled 
on a thorn-like twig of a dead bush, but beyond analogy he 
has no definite evidence of the perpetrator of this cruel act. 
The British Museum, in addition to the type from 
Kavirondo, contains one example from Nandi (Jackson), a 
good series of a dozen skins from various localities in 
Camaroon all collected by Mr. G. L. Bates, and the birds 
