186 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



form, and a darker, grayer, western one, hiittikoferi. Mrs. Meinertz- 

 hagen gives the range of the latter as Liberia, and suggests, on the 

 basis of four specimens from Gaboon, that the birds of the latter 

 area are intermediate. Sclater, on the other hand, gives the range 

 of hiittikofeH as Liberia east to Uganda. Thfough the courtesy of 

 Dr. C. W. Richmond I have had the opportunity of examining six 

 birds from Gaboon in the United States National Museum (Asche- 

 meier collection), and have assembled a series as well from eastern 

 Africa. My conclusions agree with those reached by Sclater, namely, 

 that the dark-backed form occurs east to the Congo-Uganda border. 

 However, the Gaboon and Congo specimens have shorter bills than 

 Liberian birds. Reichenow *^ gives the bill length of Liberian speci- 

 mens as 50 to 53, while Mrs. Meinertzhagen records 54 millimeters 

 for her specimen. The six Gaboon birds measure 45-47 (female), 

 46-48 millimeters (male), the one from the eastern Belgian Congo 

 (female) 41,5 millimeters; eastern birds (Kenya Colony and Tang- 

 anyika Territory), 41-43 (female), 41-43.5 millimeters (male). It 

 seems from the above measurements that the dark dorsal coloration 

 is a better racial criterion than the length of the bill. The situation 

 may be summed up as follows : There are two races of O. verniicu- 

 latus^ a dark-backed western one, which decreases in length of the 

 culmen from west to east, and a browner, lighter-backed, eastern race 

 which has a small bill throughout its range. O. v. hiittikoferi pre- 

 sents no sudden jump in bill length that may be correlated with 

 geography, and can not therefore be subdivided on the basis of size. 



In the typical race females average darker and more heavily 

 vermiculated than males, but in the western form they do not. Prob- 

 ably the latter race would be interpreted by some of the students of 

 differential sex metabolism as a female type of race, the males having 

 achieved the same degree of pigmentary intensity as the females, 

 and both having developed this tendency still more than the females 

 of the eastern subspecies. 



The measurements given by Mrs. Meinertzhagen are open to modi- 

 fication, particularly with respect to their minima. The smallest 

 birds in the series available are as follows: Male, wing 196, tail 98, 

 culmen 41.5; female, wing 195, tail 104.5, culmen 43 millimeters. 



Erlanger *^ considered the eastern birds separable into two races, 

 a northern form with a yellowish sandy tone to the upperparts, and 

 a southern form with browner back. The first occurs in Somali- 

 land, the second throughout eastern and southern Africa. Under the 

 impression that Von der Decken's type came from Somaliland, Er- 

 langer called the northeastern birds vermicnilatus^ the eastern and 



"Vog. Afr., vol. 1, pp. 201-202. 



« Journ. f. Ornith., 1905, pp. 69-72. 



