CINNYRIS YERROXI. 
under tail coverts yellowish-grey, tinged with green, particularly the flanks ; 
no axillary tufts : the colours of the other parts similar to those of the male. 
Only a very few specimens of this bird have yet been found in South Africa, and none, as 
far as I know, within the limits of the Cape Colony. Kafirland, and the country eastward 
of it, towards Port Natal, furnished the specimens we possess. Like the other species of the 
group, it feeds upon small insects, and these it collects partly from the branches and leaves of 
brushwood and dwarf trees, and partly from flowers. 
The birds of the genus Cinnyris have generally been regarded as feeding upon the saccharine 
juices which exist in flowers, but as far as my experience goes, I should be inclined to consider 
them as giving a preference to insects. In those I examined, I found the bulk of the contents of 
the stomach to be insects, though at the same time each contained more or less of a saccharine 
juice. The acquisition of a certain portion of the latter is not easily to be avoided, con- 
sidering the manner in which they insert their bills into flowers, but the consumption of insects 
of a size such as I have found in their stomachs, might easily be obviated, provided these were 
not agreeable to their palates, and not actually a description of food which they by choice 
selected. 
In the same country in which we found this bird we discovered another species of the genus, 
Cinnyris, which appears to us yet undescribed, and which we shall hereafter figure under the 
name of Cinnyris olivaceus. The colour of this species, above, is intermediate between grass 
and olive-green, the head being strongly tinged with blue ; below, it is light yellowish-green, 
with an orange tint on the throat, and on each axilla there is a small tuft of brilliant yellow 
feathers. Length, from the base of the bill to the point of the tail, five inches ; length of the 
bill, one inch, three lines. 
