532 
Mr. G. L. Bates on the 
No. 3172. $, changing by moult from immature to adult 
plumage. Assobam, Dec. 1908. 
No. 4137. $ adult. Bitye, March 1910. 
Nos. 4244 and. 4260. Both immature. Bitye, June 
and July 1910. 
I have given a full list of the specimens in this collection, 
and added to them the specimens from my former collections 
that I find in the British Museum, because Dr. Sharpe has 
strangely confused this species with T. nigro-mitratus. Adult 
males have a shining blue-black plumage on the head, back, 
throat, and chest; adult females have this colour on the head 
only ; immature birds have only the head black, and of a 
duller black than the adult females. 
The iris in all is very dark brown, almost black ; the bill 
and feet are blue, but the former has a black tip. 
The immature birds have the rectrices a little longer and 
much more pointed than those of adults. 
Tchitrea viridis. [Abelebele.] 
Sharpe, Ibis, 1904, p. 630 ; 1905, p. 470 ; 1907, p. 454 ; 
Bates, Ibis, 1905, p. 95 ; 1909, p. 32 ; Reich. V. A. ii. 
p. 504. 
Terpsiphone duchaillui Grant, Trans. Zool. Soc. xix. 
p. 404. 
Tchitrea melanura Reich. V. A. ii. p. 503. 
Tchitrea speciosa Reich. Y. A. ii. p. 724. 
I have brought home a large series of male birds with long 
tail-plumes, which, in spite of the astonishing variation in 
plumage, I believe to belong to the same species. 
Two male specimens in the British Museum, one from the 
Gambia, and the other from Casamanse, with chestnut tails 
and under tail-coverts, might be taken to represent one 
species, while those of Cameroon and Gaboon form another ; 
but my No. 3277 is an exact counterpart of the Gambia 
examples. I have also specimens in which all the parts that 
are chestnut in the cases just referred to are white, and it 
seems to be true that wherever white appears in the plumage 
it has been preceded by chestnut. 
