Birds of Prince's Island. 609 



the Philadelphia Academy said to have been procured in 

 Lagos by Mr. J. L. Burt. 



With regard to this example, I wrote to Mr. Witmer 

 Stone, who is in charge of the Museum, and asked him to 

 examine the skin mentioned by Cassin. This he has very 

 kindly done, and writes as follows : — " I have examined the 

 specimen of Symplectes princeps referred to by Cassin, and 

 it appears to be a male of that species. UnfortunateW, we 

 have no other authentic S. princeps for comparison^ but it 

 agrees accurately with the description in the ' Catalogue 

 of Birds/ except that the wing measures 3'5 instead of 

 3*4 inches. I am, however, by no means willing to accept 

 the locality ' Lagos ' without serious question. Dr. Burt 

 (the collector) was a surgeon in the U.S. Navy, and as the 

 specimen bore no original label, the locality was evidently 

 supplied by Cassin from memory, and the possibility of con- 

 fusing localities would be very great; therefore I have no 

 doubt that Count Salvadori is correct in his surmise as to 

 its distribution.^' I should like here to thank Mr. Witmer 

 Stone for the trouble he has taken on my behalf. Count 

 Salvadori expressed the opinion in his paper in 1903 [vide 

 supra) that this Weaver- Finch is confined to Prince's Island, 

 and in this conclusion I certainly agree with him. Shelley 

 shared this view and gives a figure of the male in his 'Birds 

 of Africa/ pi. xlii. fig. 2. 



Of the habits of this Weaver-bird, both Dohrn and 

 Keulemans have supplied notes. The former writes : — 

 " I observed them building nests and hatching in May, and 

 again in June. . . . Their nest is always attached to the end 

 of long and thin branches or leaves of a palm-tree. It forms 

 a cone 15 to 18 inches long and about 9 or 10 inches in 

 diameter at the base ; the small aperture is underneath. . . . 

 The eggs are two in number and light blue." Shelley has 

 the following note supplied by Keulemans : — "The species 

 is common in all parts of the island. . . . These Weavers 

 breed two or three times in the year. The eggs^ four or 

 five in number, are pale blue." 



