282 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



148-167; female, 155-163 millimeters; while specimens from farther 

 south (Kenya Colony, Tanganyika Territory, and Uganda) have the 

 following: Male 142-162, female 149-173 millimeters. The form 

 furvus is obviously a very variable group of individuals, as would 

 be expected of any intermediate aggregate connecting two peripheral 

 races. 



In his notes on the types of birds in the Tring Museum, Hartert ^ 

 writes that the East African form {intermedius) does, " * * * not 

 always differ from the south Arabian specimens in being ' darker 

 above and smaller.' It therefore requires confirmation." Other 

 recent writers who have dealt with this race agree in considering 

 it unrecognizable.^ Incidentally, Granvik's notes are of interest in 

 connection with Madanisz's race meridionalis and will be referred 

 to again. 



The second so-called subspecies, niloticus, was based on a single 

 specimen from Kenissa, White Nile, which was compared with a 

 single specimen from " East Africa " which Sztolcman considered to 

 be typical superciUosus. This, in a very variable species. The sup- 

 posed characters of niloticus — short culmen and grayish auriculars — 

 are nothing but individual in nature. The form has never been 

 accepted by any other worker, but, to judge from the literature, it has 

 been overlooked by most. Sclater and Praed * make no reference to 

 it in their list of Sudan birds, and even Gyldenstolpe,^ who gives 

 and disposes of most of the recent synonyms of the species in his 

 collection, likewise omits it from his notes. 



The third proposed race, meridionalis, is similarly easy to dispose 

 of. Madarasz had a small series of birds from the Sudan and Ethi- 

 opia, all of which had the ground color of the underparts pure white. 

 He found that his series (also small) from East and Southeast Africa 

 had the ground color of the underparts tinged with reddish, and on 

 this basis, he separated the latter under the name meridionalis, nam- 

 ing no type or type locality, and giving no definite geographic range 

 for the form. Anyone familiar with East Africa would immediately 

 suspect that the reddish ventral tinge was due to earth staining, 

 and, as a matter of fact, Granvik^ writes as follows of two birds 

 taken near Nairobi. « * * * They are * * * brownish red 

 all over the undersurface of the body * * * but this * * * 

 color disappears at once if a damp piece of cotton wool is drawn 

 across the feathers, and is thus only a superficial wash caused by the 

 discoloration of the ground." Of the large number of East African 

 birds examined in the course of the present study, quite a few have 



2 Nov. Zool., vol. 32, 1925, p. 153. 



3 See Granvik, Journ. f. Ornlth., 1923, Sonderheft, pp. 80-82 ; Gyldenstolpe, Kimgl. Sv. 

 Vet. Akad. Handlgr., 1924, p. 252, etc. 



* Ibis, 1919, p. 647. 



