THREE SPECIES OF LONCHURA — PARKES 291 



southern Celebes {L. m. brunneiceps). The pale northern extreme is 

 L. m. jormosana (Swinhoe). Salomonsen (1952, p. 354) has shown 

 that specimens from northernmost Luzon are inseparable from Taiwan 

 examples oi Jormosana. The rest of the bu'ds from central Luzon to 

 Borneo have until lately been considered to be L. m. jagori (Martens), 

 type locality restricted by Salomonsen (1953, p. 267) to Manila. 

 As represented in the Philippines, jagori is actually a tremendously 

 variable series of intermediates between Jormosana and the almost 

 consistently black-headed Borneo population. Salomonsen endeav- 

 ored to express this by describing the black-headed birds as L. m. 

 gregalis, with type locality Opol, Mindanao. This merely complicated 

 matters, however, because birds from the range ascribed by Salomon- 

 sen to his "gregalis" are not consistent in having dull black rather 

 than dark brown heads, as he claims. Three Sulu birds in the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History, for instance, have distinctly brownish 

 crowns, and even some of the Borneo specimens (cf. AMNH 720576, 

 Labuan) tend to have rather brownish heads. In a series of 18 

 specimens from Basilan, which should be "gregalis" (University of 

 Michigan Museum of Zoology), there is much variation; although 

 mostly black-headed, several are distinctly brown on the crown and 

 nape. Some of my own Luzon series (which is quite variable inter se) 

 are as dark as any Borneo specimens seen. Peters (1940, p. 209) could 

 detect no significant difference between Borneo and Philippine 

 specimens of this species, calling both jagori. De Schauensee (1957, 

 p. 11), on the other hand, upheld "gregalis " calling it "a very distinct 

 race," on the basis of comparing one adult male and two immatm*e 

 females from Mindanao with three Luzon specimens! 



Ideally we should probably use two nam.es, one for the Taiwan- 

 northern Luzon buxl and one for the birds of Borneo and northern 

 Celebes, with the rest of the Philippine birds considered as a variable 

 intergi-ading cline. Unfortunately the name jagori was based on the 

 highly variable population of central Luzon. In view of the fact 

 that variability in this species is so high in this part of the world, so 

 that few specimens could be named if their localities were unknown, 

 it appears best to continue to use jagori in its traditional sense, 

 considering gregalis Salomonsen as a synonym.. The subspecies 

 jagori thus includes both brown-headed and black-headed bu'ds, with 

 a preponderance of the latter toward the south, but no reasonable 

 geographic line can possibly be drawn between them. 



There seems to be no consistent geogi'aphic variation in Lonchura 

 malacca within the Island of Borneo; this, of course, is in strildng 

 contrast to the situation in L. leucogastra. 



