2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. 124 



A larger number of the New Guinea records belongs to the species 

 to be recharacterized in this paper, and I believe the rest belong to 

 what may prove to be another unrecognized species. The unique 

 Guadalcanal specimen belongs to still another species, and the single 

 specimen from New Ireland may be conspecific with it. 



I am grateful to Dr. Dean Amadon, American Museum of Natural 

 History (AMNH), and Mr. James D. Macdonald, British Museum 

 (Natural History) (BMNH), for lending the crucial specimens used 

 for this study. I am also indebted to Drs. S. Dillon Ripley and 

 Alexander Wetmore for their advice and comments, to Dr. Richard 

 L. Zusi for preparing the illustrations, and to Mrs. Mary LeCroy for 

 providing the map and information on New Guinea specimens. I 

 particularly wish to thank Drs. Dean Amadon, Paul Slud, George E. 

 Watson, and Richard L. Zusi for their critical reviews aimed at 

 improving the manuscript. 



New Guinea Records 



Ogilvie-Grant (1912, p. 283) was the first to report the presence of 

 C. whiteheadi in New Guinea. This record was based on a single spec- 

 imen from Parimau, Mimika River, western New Guinea, which he 

 later described (1915, p. 190) as "easily distinguished from C. lowi, 

 the only other species of this group approaching it in size, by having 

 the tail distinctly forked and the tarsi entirely devoid of feathers." 



Rothschild and Hartert (1913, p. 491) recorded a female C. white- 

 headi from Mount Goliath (not less than 5000 ft.), Snow Mountains, 

 western New Guinea. Mayr and Rand (1937, p. 76), discussing another 

 female from Baroka, Hall Sound, southeastern New Guinea, stated: 

 "This bird agrees with a female from Mt. Goliath (wing 139) taken 

 at 5000 ft., and both differ from north Luzon buds in the paler, more 

 grayish throat; in the north Luzon birds the throat is more nearly 

 like the abdomen." They regarded C. whiteheadi as a subspecies of 

 C. lowi (= C. maxima lowi, type-locality: Labuan Island, North 

 Borneo; see Deignan, 1955a) without giving any reason. Neither C. 

 m. maxima nor C. m. lowi has ever been recorded fiom the Celebes, 

 the Lesser Sunda Islands, the Moluccas, or the western Papuan islands. 



Rand (1941, p. 10) described New Guinea Collocalia specimens from 

 Hollandia (1 specimen) and the Idenburg River area (12 specimens) 

 from sea level to 1800 meters altitude as a new subspecies, C. w. 

 papuensis, including the single specimens from Mount Goliath and 

 from Baroka as paratypes. The characters used by Rand to differ- 

 entiate C. w. papuensis from nominate whiteheadi from North Luzon 

 were "throat considerably paler, more silvery gray, contrasting with 

 the brownish abdomen; and the upperparts slightly more iridescent." 



