BIEDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 247 



The material available for study (36 specimens of 5 races) is not 

 sufficient to form the basis of a review of the many forms of this 

 fruit pigeon, but the question has been gone into fairly recently by 

 Hartert and Goodson,^^ and their conclusions are corroborated by 

 the present series. Since their work, two more races have been 

 described, granviki, Grote ^- and vyldeH, Gyldenstolpe.^^ Of these 

 I have seen one specimen of the former, which I find to be recog- 

 nizable, and none of the latter. Assuming both to be good, there 

 are at present no less than 11 valid subspecies of this bird. Besides 

 these, Hartert and Goodson record one or two insufficiently known 

 (and therefore unnamed) races from southwestern Ethiopia. 



In the territory under discussion in this paper, the species occurs 

 in southwestern Ethiopia, thence south (through Turkanaland [?] 

 no records) to Uganda east to Elgon and to the Mau Escarpment, 

 the Northern Guaso Nyiro. Mount Kenia, and Taveta, south into 

 Tanganyika Territory. Only two named forms are found in Kenya 

 Colony — hrevicera, which occupies the territory east of Rift Valley 

 and north to the Northern Guaso Nyiro and Mount Kenia, inter- 

 grading in the southern Sotik district with grarwiki^ and the western 

 race salvadorii which lives in Uganda east to the western side of the 

 Rift Valley in Kenya Colony (Mau). More material is needed from 

 southwestern Ethiopia to clarify the relationships of the birds found 

 there, and also from the country between Ethiopia and Uganda, 

 from which the species is still unknown but in which it must occur, 

 bridging the gap between the two countries. 



Madarasz ^* described a fruit pigeon from Mujenje, Uganda, which 

 he called V'mago gibherifroTis. This name appears to have been 

 overlooked by most workers on African birds and is not listed or 

 disposed of otherwise by Sclater in the Systema Avium Ethiopi- 

 carum. Judging from the description and the exceedingly inade- 

 quate figure, it seems that gihherifrons is nothing but a rather un- 

 usual individual of salvadorii. The characters of this so-called 

 species are an unusually indented outline (viewed laterally) of the 

 naked cere and base of the bill, which are said to be very wide; 

 also that the forehead is swollen, forming a distinct bump in profile. 

 These characters might easily bo individual or even the result of 

 the skinning operation. The form is probably no good, but the name 

 can not therefore be ignored. It should be synonymized with Vinago 

 calva salvadorii. 



The present specimens show considerable variation in size. The 

 male has the following dimensions: Wing 166, tail 98, culmen 19, 



^ Nov. Zool., vol. 25, 1918, pp. 349-354. 



*2Journ. f. Ornitb., 1924, p. 102: Ukerewe Is., Victoria, Nyanza. 



»3 Bull. Brit. Orn. CI., vol. 44, 1924, p. 36 : Quenvep, Great Namaqualand, S. W. Africa. 



"Ann. Mus. Nat. Hungar., vol. 13, 1915, p. 393. 



