627 
Birds of Southern Cameroon. 
A sitting female (No. 3891) was brought in with a nest, 
which the boy found on the top of a decaying stump. The 
nest was a rather loose mass of rootlets, small stems, and 
husks of maize, all mixed with fine earth, damp and black. 
The one egg received (No. 321) (the other had been broken) 
measures 24 X 16 mm. 
[It is of a long oval shape, glossy, and uniform dull 
olive-green in colour.—-W. R. O.-G.] 
Appendix. 
Two subjects on which observations have been made can 
be better treated separately here than in scattered remarks 
under the different species of birds. One refers to some 
small points in the pterylography of certain groups of 
Passerine birds; the other to the kind of insect-food on 
which the birds live. 
I. The observations on pterylography were mostly made on 
skins turned inside out, in the process of preparation, 
but were verified in many cases by examination of the 
outer side and of nestling birds. 
(1) Space in the “ saddle 33 in certain Ploceidae. 
In the genera Ptoceus and Malimhus there seems to be 
always present a small bare or sparsely-feathered space 
within the enlarged portion or “ saddle” of the spinal- 
feather tract. This space is usually small; the largest one 
observed was in the specimen of Ptoceus batesi (No. 4268). 
In the two examples of C. amaurocephalus a few small and 
scattered semiplumes were found upon it. 
Besides the species already mentioned and that figured 
(text-fig. 21, B, p. 629), the following have been examined— 
usually more than one specimen of each—and found to have 
this space : Ptoceus nigricollis } P. ocularius , P . cucullatus } 
Matimbus malimbicus , M.nitens , M.rubricollis, and M. cassini. 
Many specimens belonging to other genera of the Ploceidae 
were examined and found to have no such space in the saddle 
of the spinal tract ; it is a character confined, so far as my 
observations go, to the two genera named. 
