608 Mr. G. L. Bates on the 



dark brown tliiuly scattered over tlie outer shell. In the 

 third type the ground is greenish-white, finely and densely 

 clouded, especially towards the larger end, with yellowish- 

 brown and dull grey blotches, the latter being mostly 

 arrauged in a zone round the larger end. — W. R. O.-G.] 



CiNNYRis VERTicALis. (Plate XI. fig. 16, egg.) 



Cinnyris verticalis Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 339. 



Sunbirds of this and other species used often to visit 

 my Papaw {Car lea papai/a) plants, that are ahvays fiUl of 

 blossoms. One would perch and rajjidly insert its bill into 

 each of the flowers within reach, then move to a new part 

 of the cluster. What they get in these flowers I believe to 

 be nectar and not insects, for I often looked over a cluster 

 of PapaAV flowers and have found no insects in them. Butter- 

 flies used to visit the same flowers in tlie same way. All Sun- 

 birds cat small spiders, but they do not find these in flowers ; 

 and I have seldom seen true insects iu their stomachs. 



A nest, in which a sitting female of this species was 

 caught in the evening, was like that of C. obscura, but 

 even larger and more bulky, though those are also large for 

 the size of the bird. The nest of C. verticalis had streamers 

 a foot long hanging from the lower lip of the entrance. 

 The two eggs in this nest (Nos. 462, 463) measure 

 ]8'5 X 13*5 and 18 X 13*5 mm. respectively. 



[They are of a regular oval shape, slightly pointed 

 towards the smaller end, and devoid of gloss. The ground- 

 colour is pale pink, sparingly marked with small dots, spots, 

 and short dashes of deep chocolate-brown and underlying 

 clouded markings of lilac-grey. In one specimen these 

 markings are scattered over the greater part of tlie shell ; 

 in the second most of them form an ill-defined zone round 

 the larger end.— W. R. O.-G.] 



CiNNYKIS CYANOL.EMUS. 



Cyanomitra cyanoliema Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 339. 

 . No. 4259, ? , with a marked brood-spot, was brouglit 

 with a nest and two eggs. This remarkable nest may be 

 described as an exaggerated form of the Sunbird^s hanging 



