Birds of Southern Cameroon . 
623 
blue, the bill black, and the naked or sparsely feathered 
skin of the throat blue. 
Nos. 3745 & 3746, $ & $ , with large breeding-organs, 
were brought late in the evening, with a nest, by a man who 
said he had caught them both after it got dark. He had 
seen the nest in a small tree in the ekotok, and put his hand 
over it. The nest was large enough to accommodate both 
birds, and shallow ; but it may have been flattened and 
disarranged by the man's hand. No eggs were brought, 
but dissection shewed that the female bird had recently 
laid two. 
Alethe castanea. (Plate XIT. fig. 8, egg.) 
Sharpe, Ibis, 1902, p. 94; 1908, p. 127. 
A bird of this species, which proved to be an incubating 
female, was brought alive with a nest and one egg. The 
nest was flat or saucer-shaped, without any finished rim, 
and was made of fine rootlets with a little moss, bits of 
bark, and earth intermixed ; the top layer was formed of 
ink-black rootlets, and the dark colour of the egg was in 
keeping with the colour of the nest and its surroundings, 
for the nest was said to have been found on the ground 
under the end of a decaying log in the forest. 
The egg measured about 26 x 17 or 18 mm. It was some¬ 
what broken, and could not be accurately measured. 
[It is of a long oval form and almost devoid of gloss. 
The ground-colour is pale pinkish-white, nearly hidden by 
spots and blotches of rich maroon, light red, and dull lilac 
which cover the greater part of the shell.—W.R.O.-G.] 
Alethe compsonota. 
Reich. V. A. iii. p. 746. 
Geocichla compsonota Cassin,Pr. Philad. Acad. 1859, p.42. 
Alethe alexandri Sharpe, Ibis, 1902, p. 94 ; 1908, p. 126. 
It was interesting to establish, from the type-specimen in 
the Museum of the Academy of Sciences of Philadelphia, 
the identity of the long-doubtful Geocichla compsonota of 
Cassin. Not only does the specimen itself shew this, but 
the description of Geocichla compsonota exactly fits Alethe 
