316 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



the size variation of archeri^ but the intense darkness of its coloration 

 clearly shows that it has nothing to do with Hartert's form. Blan- 

 ford's Anseba birds may possibly have been archeri. 



MICROPUS AFFINIS ABESSYNICUS (Streube!) 



Cypselus ahcssi/nicus Strevbel, Isis, 1848, col. 354 : Ethiopia. 



Specimens collected : 



Female, Malata, Ethiopia, June 22, 1912. 



At first glance this specimen appears to have a very narrow bill, 

 but careful examination sho^Ys this to be due to the tight wrapping 

 of the bill when the bird was skinned. 



The various revisions of the subspecies of this swift are far from 

 uniform in their conclusions, a lack of harmony which, together 

 with the insufficient material at hand, prevents me from getting very 

 far in my study of this bird. Hartert '^ does not mention abessynicus 

 at all but considers all tropical African birds the same as typical 

 Indian a'fjinis. He writes that specimens from Sao Thome and 

 Ceylon are the darkest. The birds of the latter island have since 

 been separated by Madarasz ® under the name sinr/alensls, and are 

 said to differ not only in darker coloration but also in having longer 

 tails than affinis. Hartert considers hoenigi a synonym of galileiensis 

 although KoUibay ^ kept the two distinct. More recently Hartert " 

 has recorded ffalilejensis from as far south as Asben and Kano, 

 western Sudan, but states that birds from Zaria are not separable 

 from tropical African ones. Still more recently Grote ^^ lists 

 gaUlejensls from the Lake Chad region but writes that it is a migrant 

 or winter visitor in that district. Lynes,^^ however, found abessynicus 

 to inhabit north and central Darfur, where it is a common resident 

 in the hills and mountains. When we consider that so very many 

 Sudanese birds range almost from the Nile to Senegal without local 

 differentiation, and bear in mind the wide-ranging flying ability of 

 swifts it is somewhat puzzling to find two forms, an eastern and a 

 western one, inhabiting the Sudanese savanna belt. However, it ap- 

 pears that galilejensis is only a winter visitor in the western part of 

 that area, and that abessynicus is the breeding form right across. 

 It is not known if abessynicus is migratory anywhere in its range, 

 but if it is not, the absence of records from Lake Chad is difficult to 

 account for. 



'Vog. pal. Fauna, vol. 2, p. 842. 



8 Ann. Mus. Hungar., vol. 9, 1911, p. 420, pi. 16, fig. 4. 



»Jouni. f. Ornith., 1905, p. 303. 



"Nov. Zool., vol. 28, 1921, p. 111. 



"Jouin. f. Ornith., 1928, p. 762. 



" Ibis, 1925, p. 365. 



