122 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



situated close to each other." This is not true for the present ex- 

 ample, which has these feathers broadly margined laterally with light 

 buffy. In some of the feathers there is a subtetminal, dark brownish, 

 transverse bar, which cuts off the terminal parts of the light lateral 

 edges, causing them to appear as apical spots. This may be what 

 Granvik found in his bird. 



In the males the number of tarsal spurs varies somewhat. The 

 bird collected by Mearns is quite young and has the spurs repre- 

 sented merely by a horny callosity on each tarsus; other males have 

 a well-developed pair on the lower half of the tarsus and a slight 

 swelling on the upper half, while one individual has two well-de- 

 veloped spurs on each foot. (Jranvik " notes that one of his males 

 has two spurs on the right foot but only one on the left, while 

 another has two on each foot. 



Oberholser '^^ has described the juvenal plumage of maraneitJiis 

 (under the name schuetti). His description agrees with a juvenal 

 female from Ngong Forest, Nairobi (A. Loveridge collection), ex- 

 cept that the latter has the feathers of the breast and sides with 

 white shafts diverging terminally into broad white apical spots. 

 Oberholser merely records " pale shaft lines " and makes no mention 

 of the large apical spots. 



The birds appear to breed throughout the year, but nests are 

 recorded most frequently from March to June and from December 

 to January. Van Someren ^° writes that in Uganda za'ppeyi nests 

 twice a year, but whether this means that the same individuals nest 

 two times (not in immediate succession as in ordinary double- 

 brooded birds) a year or that the species has two main nesting 

 seasons but that any one bird breeds in only one of them is not 

 clear, 



PTERNISTES LEUCOSCEPUS (Gray) 



The races of this spur fowl are somewhat puzzling, and I have 

 therefore taken pains to assemble adequate series for this study. 

 All in all I have examined 104 specimens of all 5 races, as recognized 

 by Sclater.^'^ The ranges of some of the races in Sclater's list *^ 

 need modification and more detailed statement. This I have at- 

 tempted to do in the following paragraphs. 



1. P. I. leucoscepus. — Eritrea, Bogosland, northern and north- 

 eastern Somaliland, and northern Ethiopia, southwest to the region 

 about Sadi Malka, where it intergrades with 3 and 2. 



■J'Journ. f. Ornlth., 1923, Sondorlieft, pp. 59-60. 



■'s Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 28, 1905, p. 834. 



™Ibis, 191(5, p. 216. 



» Syst. Avium Etbiop., 1924, pp. 91-92. 



*" Idem. 



