660 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
The two specimens we obtained were captured by the natives in this way. Biit- 
tikofer secured them at several stations in the forest region, and mentions flush- 
ing a bird from its egg between the roots of a silk-cotton tree in the forest near 
Soforé Place. Near Schieffelinsville, Stampfli secured four young from a brood 
just hatched on February 6, as well as a series of adults from the Farmington 
River. 
Francolinus bicalcaratus thornei Ogilvie-Grant. Sierra Leone Double-spurred Francolin 
Francolinus thornet Ogilvie-Grant, Bull. Brit. Orn. Club, vol. 13, p. 22, 1902: Sierra Leone. 
Size of a partridge; top of head brown bordered by black; eyebrow and throat white; feathers 
of back and wings finely variegated with whitish and dusky with dark centers, those of scapulars 
and wing-coverts bordered with white; feathers of neck and lower surfaces each with a median 
black area broadly bordered with buffy and edged with chestnut, the last becoming reduced ven- 
trally; the black shaft area of ventral feathers with a double small white spot. Legs olive, with a 
double spur in the male. 
Bannerman (1922) points out that this darker race of Sierra Leone and Liberia 
is replaced by the paler typical race to the north as well as to the south on the 
Gold Coast. Biittikofer does not mention the species although it is common in 
the plantations of eastern Liberia and along the Kru coast (Bannerman, 1912). 
Probably, however, he confused it with the following species, of which he says 
the adult male has two spurs. We first saw the bird at Memmeh Town where 
one was flushed in a cassava field, and thence eastward it was common in the 
cleared areas and rice plantations, often flushing in pairs or singles in the early 
morning or toward evening. Its note, sometimes given from a perch on some 
low stump or fallen tree, is much like the familiar pot-rack of a Guinea-fowl. 
They apparently avoid the forest almost altogether so that clearing of spaces for 
cultivation has probably been beneficial to the bird. The nesting season seems 
to be late in the year. Kemp (1905), writing of southeastern Sierra Leone, 
speaks of a female taken in late September that contained an egg, and adds 
that the nests are often found by the natives in December and January when they 
are gathering rice in the plantations; the number of eggs is always two. A male 
bird taken at Gbanga, Liberia, on September 18, we found to have the skin of the 
abdomen much thickened just as in an incubating bird, which may indicate that 
in this species the male takes part in the hatching of the eggs. 
Francolinus ahantensis Temminck. Ahanta Francolin; ‘‘Guinea-fowl’’ 
Francolinus ahantensis Temminck, Bijd. tot de Dierk., vol. 1, p. 49, pl. 14, 1854: Ahanta, Gold 
Coast. 
Size of the last; above mottled brown, neck feathers darker, edged with white; throat and in- 
conspicuous eye-stripe whitish buff; breast brown, each feather with a white stripe just back from 
its margin. Feet and bill orange; male with a single spur. Liberia to the Gold Coast. 
This, like Latham’s Francolin, is a bird of the forest, seldom visiting the 
cultivated areas. The two specimens we brought back were both trapped by the 
natives near Pajata, and Bittikofer (1885, p. 231) notes a specimen secured in 
high forest in the same way at Buluma. He obtained one also at Fisherman 
Lake, and mentions a pair from Mt. Olive, but these may all have been the pre- 
