NOVITATES ZOOLOaiCAE XXVI. 1919. 39 



have come to a fully satisfactory conclusion with the material before him. About 

 the same time I began to take special interest in Larks, and the unsatisfactory 

 state of the genus in the Catalogue of Birds led me to make my notes in Novitatbs 

 ZoOLOGicAE, 1897, pp. 142-7. Thus I broke the spell, which, as in other cases, 

 a great leading work had cast over the group. While Sharpe had recognized four 

 species, Galerida cristata, theklae, malabarica, and isabdlina — though not one of 

 the birds he called theklae was a real theklae, and most of his isabellina belonged 

 to other forms — ^I acknowledged two species, G. cristata and deva (Sharpe's 

 Spizalauda deva), the former with 18 subspecies. This was a considerable 

 advance, though some of my conclusions were utterly wrong. 



The next step, and doubtless the greatest ever made in the study of Crested 

 Larks, was Erlanger's review of the Tunisian forms in Journ. f. Orn. 1899, pp. 324- 

 52. Erlanger had the enviable opportunity to travel through the greater part 

 of Tunisia, and to observe and collect Crested Larks wherever he v.ent. He was 

 the first modern ornithologist who, apparently in collaboration witli Kleinschmidt 

 and Hilgert, clearly recognized that G. theklae was not a subspecies, but that 

 in many parts of Northern Africa a form of cristata and one of theklae Uved 

 together, that both were therefore species, each with a number of subspecies. 

 Erlanger also described biological differences, and so did I from my first journeys 

 in Algeria with Lord Rothschild, but these conclusions do not hold good, the 

 only difference which is a fact being that G. cristata is chiefly a bird of the plains, 

 while some (not aU) forms of theklae range high up in the mountains — in many 

 places, however, for example in Spain, near Biskra, on the Hauts Plateaux of 

 Algeria, in Marocco, in Tunesia, both occur in the same places ; certain forms 

 inhabit only certain restricted localities, but these peculiarities do not hold good 

 throughout the species in all forms. Song, nests, and eggs differ sometimes, 

 but not equally throughout the two species. 



Based on Erlanger's discoveries, Whitaker's and my own continual studies 

 of this group, I was able to come to a fairly correct review in Vog. pal. Fauna, 

 pp. 226-40 (publ. 1904), but since then Kleinschmidt and Hilgert, Loudon and 

 Harms, Nicoll, Neumann and others, have advanced our knowledge, while 

 Rothschild, Hilgert, and I collected vast series in Algeria and the Sahara. It 

 is there where an observant collecting ornithologist must see that two species 

 live together, and how they vary geographically, but also, sometimes to a 

 disturbing degree (specially the theklae forms), individually ! 



Wliile Nicoll assures us that he has studied Crested Larks in Egypt for over 

 eleven years, may I remind him that I have studied the Crested Larks of the 

 world for about twenty-eight years, and I know probably very much more about 

 their considerable individual variation, which Nicoll tells us (p. 743) exists, as if 

 it was a point missed by us. It is just the individual variation which leads me 

 to beUeve that " moeritica " cannot be separated from maculata, and I believe 

 that this view wiU be the right one in the end, though I admit that I would like 

 to examine again a larger series from the Fayoum. 



About the distribution of maculata and nigricans nothing can be clearer than 

 NicoU's words in Ibis, 1914, p. 548, where he says of the former, which he called 

 altiroslris of course, that it " can be traced on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt 

 from Mariut on the west as far east as Damietta, southward on both sides of 

 the Nile south of Cairo to Asswan," adding : "It generally skirts the breeding 

 range of G. c. nigricans in the delta and keeps to the poorer soil near the 



