184 FOREIGN FINCHES IN CAPTIVITY. 



broadly tipped with white, the outermost feathers with the outer web 

 white ; flight feathers smoky-brown, with greyish-brown edges, inner 

 secondaries with golden-brown tips, a blackish subterrninal bar on the 

 inner webs ; feathers round the eye, front of cheeks, chin, and back of 

 throat, white ; a broad band of crimson from the ear coverts over the 

 back of the cheeks and across the throat ; remainder of under surface 

 fawn-coloured, the chest mottled with white and barred with black, 

 (having a very beautiful effect when the bird sings), centre of abdomen 

 and vent white ; feathers of flanks with blackish terminal bars ; under 

 tail-coverts creamy-white, black at base. Length 41 to 51 inches. Beak 

 and legs flesh-coloured ; iris brown. 



The hen is rather duller coloured than the cock, shows no pure 

 white on the cheeks, chin, or throat ; the latter being whitish, speckled 

 with black ; the crimson ribbon is wanting ; the under parts are dull 

 fawn colour, with no white mottling on the chest, and the blackish 

 bars mostly broken up into dots and dashes. Length 4.% inches ; but 

 probably somewhat variable. It is found from Senegambia to N. H. 

 Africa, and southwards to Masai-Land. 



In the bird-room and aviary I found this bird a veritable bully 

 and nuisance ; interfering with the nesting of other birds, chasing and 

 tormenting them, building and stealing nests, laying eggs but failing 

 to sit on and hatch them. On the other hand, if placed in an aviary 

 with birds stronger or bolder than itself, it is a coward. In the breed- 

 ing cage it is one of the most charming, confiding, and accommodating 

 of all the Ornamental Finches, and this is particularly the case with 

 birds bred in such a cage. 



I had been without any Cut-throat Finches for some six or seven 

 years, possibly longer, when, in the summer of 1892, I made up my 

 mind to try breeding them in a large cage ; I, therefore, wrote to Mr. 

 Abrahams for a pair, and turned them into a cage 34 inches high, 23 

 inches wide, and 25 inches from front to back ; in one corner I hung 

 up a German canary-cage, and supplied the birds with hay, moss, and 

 cow-hair ; they soon set to work and built, the hen laying five eggs, 

 upon which the pair took turns and hatched, on the twelfth day, five 

 young ones. I now supplied them daily with a small pot of Abrahams' 

 Insectivorous birds' food, upon which they fed the young ; when the 

 young birds were about half grown, one was carried out dead, and now 

 the call began to be distinctly heard " chit, chit, chit " : when I first 

 heard it I feared that the parents had caught cold, it so closely 

 resembled a bird's sneeze ; the birds went to nest in August, and the 

 young, two pairs (nearly resembling their parents), left the nest about 



