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Show 204 SIR HARRY H. JOHNSTON ON [Mar. 21, this small brown vulture is extremely common and abundant in most parts of Sierra Leone, I have never seen it anywhere on the coast of Liberia between Monrovia and Cape Palmas. The Grey Parrot with a red tail is not indigenous to any part of Liberia. It is frequently to be met with in the houses of the natives on the coast, because it is brought there from the Gold Coast or the Congo by steamers. But the indigenous Psittacus is P. timneh, which is without the red tail, and is said not to be able to learn to talk. The grey of its plumage is browner. The tail sometimes seems to be a purple or an almost violet colour. The true Grey Parrot does not seem to make its appearance as a wild bird in West Africa until the Gold Coast is reached. This tendency towards a purple tail reappears in the variety of the true Grey Parrot which is found on the Portuguese island of Principe, in the Gulf of Guinea. Here also the plumage of the body is tending towards purple-grey, and is much darker in tone than the pale ash-grey of the ordinary type. In the western Congo and Angola, the Grey Parrot is gradually developing into a type which will be in time scarlet all over. On the island of Principe it seems to be evolving a purple form; while in the Timneh Parrot we seem to have a connecting-link between the genus Psittacus and the brown- grey- yellow- and green parrots of the genus Pceocephalus. The Liberian Hornbills belong to the genera Bycanistes, Cera-togymna, Lophoceros, and Ortholophus. This selection includes the smallest of all the Hornbills, Lophoceros camurus, and the very eccentric-looking Black Horn bill and Elate Hornbill, the females of which have a bright chestnut head and neck, whilst the plumage in the same part of the males is black. Apparently the only form of Ortholophus which has been collected in Liberia is the smaller of the two species-leucolophus-in which the tips of the secondaries and primaries are not, white, while there is a slight difference in the distribution of greyish-white about the cheeks. The larger and handsomer Ortholophus albocristatus is stated by Elliot (on, apparently, the authority of the type-specimens, supposed to have been collected by Cassin at Sierra Leone) to inhabit North-West as well as West and Central Africa (Niger, Cameroons, Congo, and Angola). Elliot remarks on the curious occurrence of Ortholophus leucolophus in the middle of this range, as it were, in the countries of Liberia and the Gold Coast. So far as I can ascertain, however, no specimens of 0. albocristatus have been obtained from regions west of Lagos since Elliot's monograph on the Hornbills was written. Is it not possible, therefore, that Cassin or his collector may have made a mistake in ascribing their specimens of albocristatus to Sierra Leone ? May they not really have been brought from much further east on the West Coast of Africa ? It would be a very curious point in distribution if albocristatus should be found in Sierra Leone, and not re-occur again in Western Africa till the Niger was reached. Amongst the birds collected by Mr. Reynolds on the St. Paul's |