ZOOLOGY 
333 
the length of the body. The head is surmounted by a crest, generally abased, 
there is a whitish cere over the beak and the beak itself is generally red with 
rather a wide gape, the upper mandible turned down something like the beak 
of a falcon or of a turaco. The Colies frequent the low trees or bushes of the 
forest. They creep and run about the branches like mice which accounts for 
their common name in South Africa. Their plumage is greyish-brown, with 
a faint striation. 
In an earlier chapter of this book I have dwelt on the beautiful green 
turacos with their crimson pinions. These lovely birds are represented by three 
species in British Central Africa— Turacus livingstoni, Gallirex chlorochlaniys y 
and Schizorhis concolor. The first named is grass-green with dark blue wing 
coverts and tail, a white tip to the graceful crest and the usual crimson 
pinions. The second, Gallirex, is a dark indigo blue, shot with emerald green, 
with grey breast and crimson pinions. The third, however, is without the 
crimson pinions. Its wing feathers are black, the rest of its body is usually 
grey with the exception of the breast where there is a curious patch of dull 
green, showing the beginning of that green tint which has become so character¬ 
istic of the turacos. It would be more correct perhaps to describe the wing 
pinions as purple rather than black. 
The green turaco is altogether a graceful and lovely creature but the 
Gallirex though gaudily coloured is a coarse bird of ugly outline. It has 
a tremendous gape and a great red throat. When it opens its beak to gulp 
down pieces of banana it looks singularly ugly. It seems to be a less highly 
developed type of plantain eater. I have reared the young of both species from 
the nest (they are generally two or three in number 1 ). The young birds when 
born appear to be covered with a dark bluish grey down. Though rather 
sprawling they can crawl about on their legs from the first and have more 
activity in the nest than the young of pigeons. In this early stage the bare- 
looking head is rather parrot-like. The way these young birds clamber about 
in an almost quadrupedal fashion helping themselves sometimes with their 
unfeathered wings reminded me of what I had read concerning the young 
of Opisthocomus , though of course the habits were not so strongly marked, and 
so far as I know the young of the turacos have not the fingers of the manus 
so much developed as in Opisthocoinus. 
The ashy-coloured Schizorhis is not at all common in Nyasaland but is met 
with more frequently in the low-lying parts to the west. It is a bird which 
frequents the great plains of Tropical Africa rather than the forested uplands. 
These Schizorhince attain their greatest development, however, in the forests of 
West Africa, where they produce that magnificent bird the giant Plantain eater 
(.Schizorhis gigantea)'} 
Parrots are poorly represented, as indeed is the case throughout Africa. 
The only two genera which are really indigenous to British Central Africa are 
Agapornis and Pceocephalus. Agapornis (the love-bird) is represented by a new 
1 It is said by the natives that four are often hatched at a time. 
2 The small family of the turacos is purely African at the present day. It should be very interesting 
to ornithologists as it is one of those indeterminate groups which serve as important links in the chain of 
development. The Mitsophagid<z (Turacos and Plantain eaters) are related to the cuckoos, more distantly 
to the parrots, to the colies, to Opisthocomus —that extraordinary South American bird which retains so 
many primitive characters—and to the GaUinacea. The turacos in my opinion (which, if I remember 
rightly, is based on that of the late Professor Garrod) appear to be the descendants of some central group 
of birds from which the parrots and most of Picarians branched off in one direction, while there was a 
connection with Opisthocomus and the Gallinaceous birds in another, this connection probably passing 
through forms like the South American Curassows ( Cracidce ). 
