36 NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE XXVI. 191 ft. 



MOEE NOTES ON THE CRESTED LARKS OF THE 

 NILE VALLEY. 



By dr. ERNST HARTERT. 



BEING exeeedinglj' busy at present, I very much di.slike answering articles 

 in which attempts are made to correct my views on certain questions, 

 and prefer to trust to the future which will vindicate me or prove that I erred , 

 but I cannot help replying to NicoU's letter on Crested Larks of the Nile Valley 

 in Ibis, 1918, pp. 741-3, which is a reply to my notes on the same subject in 



NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE, 1917, pp. 439-41. 



Nicoll evidently dislikes to alter the conclusions to which he came before. 



Nobody, however, can work without ever making mistakes, and should be 

 broad-minded enough to accept alterations of one's own views or correct them 

 oneself if one finds them out to be erroneous. This latter is what I have done 

 in 1917, and Nicoll should not call what I have done "transferring " the name 

 altiroslris, because I have now not transferred it, but only applied it correctly. 

 I have misled Nicoll in accepting the name altirostris for the bird inhabiting the 

 Nile VaUey from Cairo (and on poorer soil north to Damietfa), to at least Assuan 

 (Aswan). AU he knew about this name was what I had written about it, and 

 he agreed with that, because he was misled by my having labelled a Kom Ombos 

 specimen as the type ; before I unearthed the name altirostris and others it had 

 been entirely forgotten, since the Cat. B. Brit. Mus. vol. xiii. made no mention 

 of it. In my notes in Novttates Zoologicae, 1917, I tried to prove that I had 

 been wrong, and as Nicoll now disagrees with me, I must do so again. 



The reasons for my stating that the Akasheh specimen is the type cf 

 altirostris, and not the one from Kom Ombos (or Kom Ombo), are several. 



First of all the description of G. c. altirostris in Naumannia, 1855, p. 209, 

 does not agree with the Kom Ombo bird, but wth the Akasheh ones. In the 

 first very short and preliminary diagnosis, Vogelfang, p. 124 (1855), is hardly 

 anything definite except the mention of the short, curved, and exceptionally 

 high beak — otherwse Brehm said it was like some German specimens which he 

 at the time called pagorum, and that is the whole description ! We must therefore 

 look for the fuller description in Naumannia, 1858. There Brehm compares it 

 with angustistriata, of which he says that the middle rectrices are strongly tinged 

 with rust -colour, while the lateral ones arc chieflj' rust -colour — in opposition to 

 maculata which has the middle rectrices blackish. Now this is exactly what the 

 Akasheh specimens show, while the one from Kom Ombos has the darker tail. 

 I don't think much of the shape of the bill, which varies and is not very different 

 in the two specimens in question. This is the most important point : the 

 description fits the Akasheh skins, not the Kom Ombo one ! 



Secondly, the labels : One of the two Akasheh skins has the name altirostris 

 clearly written out and unaltered. The one from Kom Ombo has it crossed out 

 on both sides of the label, though " underpunctuated " again on the front side, 

 meaning clearly that Brehm (we suppose, but do not know, that he had crossed 

 it out himself) was uncertain about the name. 



