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Carlo Von Erianger in the stony Sahara of Sonth Tunisia, at Tataonine, Sanger 

 Oued Oum el Graf, Biar Darsen, and the Djebel Sidi Ahmed ben Mohamed, 

 they strike us at once as being mostly of a brighter cinnamon-rnfous coloration, 

 only three or fonr being more greyish and blackish. Erianger made the mistake 

 of calling the latter (four; '■'■ suprr/fiin" while he very correctly gave a new name, 

 Galerida theklae carolinae (in honour of his mother, Baroness Carolina) for the 

 reddish specinieus ; all his birds, however, inhabiting the same area — very desolate 

 stony desert, ]iarti;illy flat, partially monutainoiis, with very scanty, uniform vege- 

 tation — belong doubtless to the same subspecies, and all the ten skins must therefore 

 be called G. t. carolinae. It is curions that the error of naming the less reddish 

 specimens from the same places " super/hia" was repeated by Messrs. Kleinschmidt 

 and Hilgert, in the generally excellent, carefully e(ira]iiled " Katalog der Collection 

 von Erianger,"' in which Mr. Kleinschmidt co-op'rated in the whole of the genus 

 Galerida. 



So far, with the exception of one or two skins without exact locality sold 

 by Schliiter some years ago, only the specimens collected by the Erianger 

 ex])edition were known of G. t. carolinne. In April 1911 we came across many 

 reddish specimens of the theklae gronp near Laghonat, Tilrhempt, and east of 

 Ghardaia, and as soon as we came into the uniform stony desert south of 

 Laghonat, Hilyert remarked, "Why, this is exactly the same formation and soil 

 as in the Sonth Tiniislau desert, where we found ^carolinae' I" 



Confronting the 36 examples which we collected near Laghonat, Tilrhempt, 

 and Ghardaia, we find them to come so close to " carolinae " that we must, for the 

 time being, unite them with the latter. It is true, however, that about I.t of the 

 Sonth Algerian specimens are greyish, while practically only two from Sonth Tunisia 

 are rather grey, and that the majority of the red South Algerian birds are sliglitly 

 paler than most Tunisian ones ; but we must not forget that the Sonth Tunisian series 

 is so much smaller, and that it was collected while Erianger and his able taxider- 

 mist, Mr. Hilgert, were somewhat run down after a long desert journey, and before 

 t bey knew the importance of and the great interest attached to their discovery. They 

 did not, under the circumstances, lay themselves out to get all jiossible variations ; it 

 is therefore quite possible, and we believe most likely, that a larger series will show 

 the same variation as our birds from South Algeria. Moreover all Erlanger's birds 

 were taken in January, all ours in April. If we unite the two forms, we must 

 suppose that the area of distribution of this form in South Tunisia and that in South 

 Algeria are connected by stony desert-])lateaux, which are all inhabited by G. t. 

 carolinae, while G. t. deichleri is found in the sandy desert, where the latter is 

 interspersed with smaller or larger stony islands, and where there is more or less 

 vegetation, but not in the shifting, bare dunes. 



As we have said, red and grey birds were found together in the same districts, 

 and sometimes one of a pair was the extreme of red, the other almost the greyest 

 of the series. 



These birds were very common on the stony desert south of Laghonat, on the 

 rocks close to Laghonat, in the river bed of the Oued M/i, which farther becomes 

 the Oued Djeddi, and just north of this river. It was found every wliere to the south 

 of Laghouat, was common about Tilrhempt, but rare near Ghardaia, where we only 

 obtained a pair 16 kilometres east of Ghardaia — the only ones we saw. AVe found 

 some nests near Laghouat, more or less sheltered in grass tussocks. A clutch of 

 four fresh eggs was found on April 10, lioth parents being shot. Unfortunately 



