COLIUSPASSER MACROURUS 51 
which here lasts from May to September. In May Mr. Boyd 
Alexander found many in the full breeding plumage, and 
others still in the brown dress. He met with them inland 
to as far as Binduri near Gambaga. In the Niger district 
Mr. Hartert found them in June and July at Loko, in full 
plumage, assembling in large flocks with other Finches in the 
rice and cornfields. | Bohndorff procured the species in the 
Niam-Niam country, Dr. Reichenow and Mr. Sjéstedt in 
Camaroons, Du Chaillu and Marche in Gaboon, Falkenstein 
and Petit on the Loango Coast, Sperling, Jameson and 
Bohndorff on the Lower Congo, and Storms during his 
Tanganyika expedition. In the British Museum there is 
one of Mr. Monteiro’s specimens from Angola, and in the 
Lisbon Museum one procured by Welwitsch at Galungo-Alto. 
The species has not been recorded from further south in 
Western Africa, but ranges southward to the Zambesi; here 
Mr. Boyd Alexander shot a hen bird in January, 1899, at 
Zumbo (31° HK. long.). Along the Shiré Valley Sir John Kirk 
saw large numbers of them on the wide grass-plains, flying from 
one grass-head to another, always selecting the highest; know- 
ing this, the natives catch them by setting a noose on any grass- 
head rising above the others. ‘‘ The breeding plumage,’’ he 
remarks, “was assumed in December and lasted throughout 
the wet season. The nest was made of grass, woven among 
the stalks. In this district Sir Alfred Sharpe procured the 
species on Dedja, a mountain in Central Angoniland, on the 
Portuguese frontier, at an altitude of 7,000 feet. 
In German East Africa specimens have been collected by 
Bohm at Ifume and near the Lukumbi River, by Fischer 
on the southern banks of the Victoria Nyanza, at Speke’s Gulf, 
and he also procured a specimen near Port Melinda, which is 
the most eastern range known for the species. Between this 
place and Uganda I do not find it recorded; but in the latter 
