BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 349 



phala. He again separated Senegambian birds from Abyssinian 

 ones, describing the latter under the name ugandae (southern Ethi- 

 opia, Somaliland, Lake Rudolf district, and Uganda) and supported 

 the validity of centralis. He then split fallidiventris into three 

 races, the typical South African, ogilviei of Nyasaland, and a new 

 one, kivuensis, of the central-lakes district. Finally, to bring this 

 historical summary to a close, tSclater ^'^ rejected centralis and ugandae^ 

 reverted to the name swainsoni which he treated as a race of leucoce- 

 phala, and synonymized ogilviei with swainsoni. This brief account 

 is by no means complete but merely serves to show how definitely the 

 literature was confused and how hopeless the task of straightening 

 out the taxonomies of the group seemed to be. 



In the present study I have examined the combined series of the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology, the United States National Mu- 

 seum, the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, 

 and the Cleveland Museum, totaling in all some 220 specimens 

 from the following localities — Ethiopia, French Somaliland, British 

 Somaliland, Arabia, the Sudan, Senegal, Cameroon, Cape Verde 

 Islands, the Belgian Congo, Uganda, Kenya Colony, and Tan- 

 ganyika Territory. The conclusions I have reached are as follows: 



There are two species — leucocephala and pallidivcntrh which oc- 

 cur together over a considerable part of their ranges, the former 

 being on the whole more northern, the latter more southern in dis- 

 tribution. Of paUidiventris there are no valid geographical forms. 

 Of leucocephala, the following races are recognizable — the typical 

 one ranging from Senegal and Cameroon east to Ethiopia, Somali- 

 land, Kenya Colony, and north central Tanganyika Territory; 

 acteon of the Cape Verde Islands; semicaerulea of southwestern 

 Arabia ; and hyacinthin<i of the coastal strip of east Africa from 

 Djibouti south to south-central Tanganyika Territory, thence inland 

 to Nyasaland. I consider centralis and ugandae synonyms of leuco- 

 cephala. and ogilviei a synonym of hyadnthina.^ not of paUidi- 

 ventris as Sclater ^^ indicates. 



Because of the richness of the material examined I feel justified 

 in going into greater detail at this point. 



1. Halcyon paUidiventris. — This species resembles leucocephala 

 but has the abdomen very much lighter — chestnut taAvny instead of 

 deep rufous brown, and the remiges, lower back, and rectrices always 

 violaceous, never bluish in color. I have seen no typical Angolan 

 material, but Van Someren's form hivuensis does not seem to have 

 any characters to define it. His taxonomic procedure in this case 

 is very poor. On page 77 he lists H. p. hivuensis as a race of paUi- 

 diventris and gives as its range " North Tanganyika, Kivu, Albert 



»*Syst. Avium Ethiop., 1924, pp. 216-217. 



