610 
Mr. G. L. Bates on the 
The eggs are always two in number. They do not, as a 
rule, vary more than half a millimetre in either dimension 
from 15x11 mm., but one long, slender egg (No. 454, the 
fellow of which had been broken) measures 18 x 10 mm. 
[Nos. 413, 414 have a somewhat different ground-colour 
to the rest, viz. pure creamy white, instead of bluish- 
white.—W. R. O.-G.] 
Cinnyris minullus. (Plate XI. fig. 23, egg.) 
Reich. Y. A. iii. p. 487. 
Nos. 3579, 3602, 3631, 3637, 3660, 3663, 3669, 3762. 
All <$ ad. Bitye. 
Nos. 3544, 3632, 3642, 4166, 4191. All £ ad. or immature. 
Bitye. 
Males. Wing 46-50 mm.; culmen 15-16 mm. 
Females. Wing 43-45 mm. ; culmen 14-15 mm. 
Several years ago I noted that some of the specimens, as 
I supposed, of Cinnyris chloropygius were very small; and 
in April 1909, at a time when the Tya'a (Leea sp.) was 
abundantly in flower and the little Bulu boys were catching 
many Sunbirds with snares fixed on the flowers, I skinned 
a large number of these very small Sunbirds, and satisfied 
myself that there was a second but smaller species 
resembling C. chloropygius. In a large number of the 
latter measured the length of wing in the males varied 
from 49 to 53 mm., and the culmen from 17*5 to 19 mm. ; 
in the females, wing 47 to 49 mm., culmen 17 to 18 mm. 
There is thus a marked difference in size, and especially in 
length of bill. It was noticed, too, that in the small males 
the red feathers of the breast had dark blue metallic tips, 
while in the larger ones they had not. Subsequently, I 
discovered in the f Vogel Afrikas 9 Reichenow’s very brief 
description of Cinnyris minullus from a single specimen 
collected by Zenker, in which he gives only one dis¬ 
tinguishing character, viz., white under wing-coverts, and 
I found that this held in my smaller species (in males of 
C. chloropygius they are grey). Thus there are three good 
characters for distinguishing the males of C. minullus (which 
