742 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
sisted of the entire tops of a Dryopteris-like fern, lined with a mass of grass 
having finely branched heads. It contained no eggs but the female had one 
nearly ready for extrusion in the oviduct. The crops of both birds were filled 
with small white kernels of some species of seed. Biittikofer, who collected 
specimens at Buluma, Schieffelinsville, Old Field, Hill Town, Farmington and 
Marfa rivers, mentions a nest from the first-named locality that contained two 
white eggs. It was placed in a fork four feet from the ground in the under- 
wood of high forest, was ball-shaped with the opening on one side and was 
composed of soft stalks and grass panicles unlined. 
Pyrenestes sanguineus coccineus Cassin. Scarlet-headed Weaver 
Pyrenestes coccineus Cassin, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 1848, p. 67: Monrovia, Liberia. 
Length 5.5 inches; heavy-billed weavers, the male with bright scarlet head, throat, rump, 
flanks, and tail; back, wings, belly, and under tail-coverts and under side of tail olive brown, the 
back sometimes tinged with scarlet; bill black, eyelids white. Liberia and Sierra Leone. 
This brownish instead of blackish race is characteristic of the northern ex- 
tension of the coast forest. It is a bird of swampy places, especially of bushy 
growth along streams. We saw it at Gbanga in such situations, especially 
along the bushy border of a stream flowing through partly cultivated areas 
whence the birds venture into adjoining rice-fields. They are shy and wary, 
on the least alarm flying up with many twists and turns, and disappearing in 
some other part of the swamp. Kemp (1905) has recorded similar habits in 
Sierra Leone. Biittikofer found at Robertport what seems to have been a 
small colony of about ten pairs in a swampy grove, though usually the birds 
are seen either singly or in scattered pairs. He describes the nests as consist- 
ing of a heap of dead reeds with a lining of soft grass panicles, and the eggs 
usually six in number, which seems many for so uncommon a bird. Chapin 
(Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 49, p. 415-441, 1924) has remarked on the 
great variation in the size of the bill in this species irrespective of other factors. 
Our series of three adult males illustrates the same thing, for one has a very 
much wider beak than the two others and in color is much darker-bellied, 
almost blackish, with a good deal darker wings. 
Ortygospiza atricollis (Vieillot) 
Fringilla atricollis Vieillot, Nouv. Dict. Sci. Nat., vol. 12, p. 182, 1817: Senegal and Gambia. 
Length about 4 inches; above, grayish brown, the forehead, lores, cheeks, chin, and throat 
black; breast and sides banded with black and white, or gray-brown and white, breast light red- 
dish brown, with white in the middle of belly washed with yellowish brown; under tail-coverts 
white streaked with blackish; wings and tail dark grayish brown. West Africa from Senegambia 
to Gaboon. 
Biittikofer’s record is the only one for Liberia, namely a bird taken by 
Stampfli at Monrovia, and recorded as O. polyzona, which, as Reichenow has 
shown, is the proper name for the species of East Africa. Chubb in his list 
of Liberian birds includes Zonogastris melba without comment but probably 
through inadvertence for this or the following species. It is a weaver of south- 
eastern Africa. 
