BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 363 



ern Tanganyika Territory. In his description of sharpel Hartert 

 called it the "East African" form, which justified Zedlitz and 

 Grant, and later, Sclater, in following the course they took. How- 

 ever, recently Hartert ^^ has said that the type of sharpel came from 

 the Hand, Somaliland, and found that birds from Somaliland and 

 Shoa differ from those of tropical East Africa in having the blue 

 superciliaries more extensive posteriorly and darker in color. The 

 name sharpel, of course applies to the northern birds. 



In studying the variations of this species I have examined a series 

 of 122 specimens from West Africa, Sudan, Ethiopia, British Soma- 

 liland, Kenya Colony, Uganda, Tanganyika Territory, and South 

 Africa, and find that Hartert is absolutely correct in regard to the 

 validity of sharpel and that Zedlitz and Sclater are justified in 

 recognizing ocularis. I recognize five races, as follows : 



1. M. p. pusiUus. — ^West Africa from Senegal, Gambia, Sierra 

 Leone, Gold Coast, and Nigeria to Cameroon, north to the northern 

 border of the upper Guinean savannas, east to Lake Chad and eastern 

 Darfur. Sclater gives the Chad district as the eastern limit but 

 Lynes ^^ writes that, " * * * western Kordof an to eastern Darfur 

 should be the boundary between these two races * * * but there 

 is likely to be a fusion of races between Longs. 26° and 29° '' * * *." 



2. M. p. ocularis. — Eritrea, Bogosland, northeriL Ethiopia and the 

 Nile Valley from Khartoum to the Bahr el Ghazal and northwestern 

 Uganda, west to eastern Darfur, or at least, western Kordofan. 

 Sclater writes the range as, " The Nile Valley * * * east to 

 is likely to be a fusion of races between Longs. 26° and 29° * * *." 

 (italics mine), but he obviously meant to say east for west and the 

 opposite. 



3. M. p. sharpel. — Somaliland, Shoa, central and southern 

 Ethiopia. 



4. M. p. cyanostlctus. — Jubaland, Turkanaland, and northern and 

 central Kenya Colony, south in the eastern part to the Kilimanjaro 

 district, the Usambara Mountains, Tanga, and the Pangani River, 

 Tanganyika Territory. In southern Kenya Colony, northern Tan- 

 ganyika Territory, and the Kavirondo districts this form intergrades 

 extensively with the next. 



5. M. p. merldlonalis. — Ruwenzori, eastern Ituri district, Belgian 

 Congo, Ruanda, Urundi, Uganda, the Sotik district of Kenya Colony 

 (more or less intermediate between this and the last), northern 

 Tanganyika Territory, to Dar es Salaam, south througli East Africa 

 to Zululand, the Transvaal, and Natal, west througli the Katanga, 

 Rhodesia, and Bechuanaland, to Angola (north to the mouth of the 

 Congo River), and to Ovampoland and Damaraland. 



"Nov. Zool., vol. 31, 1924, pp. 1112-113. 

 18 Ibis, 1925, p. .376. 



