THE BIRDS OF LIBERIA 637 
been done. Small collections of birds and mammals were sent to the U. 8. 
National Museum from Mount Coffee, on the St. Paul’s River, by R. P. Currie 
in 1897 and briefly reported on, and in 1905 Charles Chubb recorded various 
birds sent by British officials stationed in Liberia. The same author prepared 
a summary list of Liberian birds to accompany the brief notes on the avifauna 
by Sir Harry Johnston in his two-volume work, “ Liberia,’’ published in 1906. 
Finally, the brief though important visits of Mr. Willoughby P. Lowe to locali- 
ties on the Kru coast of southern Liberia, in December 1910, January 1911, 
and again, for a single day each in February and March, 1911, carried out as 
part of a season’s collecting on the West Coast, added several important species 
to the list. Our own work was of necessity hurried, but it covered a part of 
the country that was previously unknown ornithologically, most of it, how- 
ever, differing little in character from the heavy forest so well worked by Butti- 
kofer. The eastern part of Liberia is doubtless somewhat transitional to the 
drier country of southeastern Sierra Leone and French Guinea so that inter- 
esting comparisons were made possible with the list published by Kemp (1905) 
of birds collected at Bo, in that country. The time of our visit was at the 
height of the rains, which not only made travel difficult, but added to the 
difficulty of collecting and preparing specimens; yet this had the advantage 
of permitting a more careful contrast of the list of birds seen with those ob- 
tained at more favorable seasons by previous collectors, indicating that several 
species probably are absent locally from certain regions during the wet times. 
Buttikofer (1885) writes: ‘In August the rains set in with double strength 
and a whole week of continual rain is nothing unusual during this period. The 
small rivulets, clear as crystal in the dry season [ December to March ], are swol- 
len to rivers, the forest-marshes to lakes, above which brushwood and high 
forest make a very dreary-looking appearance. ‘The lower forest-regions get 
inundated by the swelling rivers, and the narrow foot-paths . . . are for a great 
deal impracticable.’’ In spite of the difficult conditions, however, we secured 
137 species of birds, 21 of which had not previously been recorded from Liberia. 
In the following list of the birds of Liberia, based on the work of previous 
writers, are given: first, the Latin name in current use, followed by the quo- 
tation of the original reference where each species is described, and the type 
locality; next comes a very brief description designed to help in the identi- 
fication of specimens, particularly for anyone slightly familiar with birds who 
may be living in Liberia; the range in Africa follows and then a summary 
of what has been published on the habits and occurrence of the species in Libe- 
ria, together with our own notes where these seemed sufficiently important. 
The present list, revised and corrected, comprises 281 species or subspecies; 
that of Biittikofer (1889) included 229 to which he later added two more. The 
order and nomenclature are those given in Sclater’s (1924) Systema Avium 
Ethiopicarum, Part 1, from Struthionidae through Picidae, but from that 
point to the end of the list, the works of Sharpe and Reichenow have been 
chiefly followed. For much kindly help and criticism in the preparation of 
the list, I am indebted to Messrs. Outram Bangs and James L. Peters, of the 
