BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 353 



3. Halcyon chelicuti damarensis. — South Africa north to Mossa- 

 medes and Bulawayo. This race is characterized by larger size than 

 either of the other two (wing 82-88 as against 73-85), and slightly 

 darker coloration. Gyldenstolpe ^^ writes that he can not : 



* * * find that these birds (South African) are darker than specimens 

 from further north. As a rule it appears as if South African birds have longer 

 bills, and if the characters pointed out above (wing length and bill) will be con- 

 sidered sufficient for separating a southern form, this ought to be known as 

 Halcyon chelicuti daniarcntiis * * * 



It is necessary to come back to Grote's form hylohius for a more 

 detailed discussion of the geography of size variation in this bird. In 

 his original description he writes that it is intermediate in size 

 between the smaller, light-colored chelicuti, which seldom has a wing 

 length of more than 80 millimeters, and the larger, darker-colored 

 dmnarensis which usually has a wing length of not less than 82 milli- 

 meters and which varies from 82-90 millimeters. The wing length 

 of hylohius is given as ranging from 79-84 millimeters. In color 

 hylohius is said to resemble damareynsis, and Gyldenstolpe ^^ has 

 stated that the latter does not differ constantly in this character from 

 chelicuti. In other words, the overlapping in size of the three is so 

 extensive as to make it practically impossible to identify any single 

 specimen as hylohius. The extent of the overlapping and of individ- 

 ual variation in tropical east Africa led Grant ^^ to write that he 

 could see no racial differences between eastern and western or north- 

 ern and southern specimens. Gyldenstolpe ^^ writes that birds from 

 Senegal, Upper White Nile, and Northern Somaliland are rather 

 small, having wings 73-77 millimeters long, while specimens from 

 Kenya Colony, Tanganyika Territory, Uganda, eastern Belgian 

 Congo, and lower Congo have wings 77-85 millimeters in length 

 u * * * gj^^ ^j,g ^j^^^g more or less intermediate between birds from 

 Abyssinia, etc., and those from South Africa." I do not know from 

 what part of Ethiopia he saw specimens, but all of the 23 Ethiopian 

 birds examined in the course of the present study, with two excep- 

 tions (76.5 millimeters each), fall within the latter limits. If Sene- 

 galese birds are uniformly smaller than these, then they should be 

 separated, in which case the name variegata Vieillot would be avail- 

 able for them. Inasmuch as chelicuti was described from Ethiopia, 

 and since Ethiopian birds do not differ from East African ones, I 

 can see no ground for the support of hylohius. Grote writes that 

 hylohius is the form of the West African forest region, but this bird 

 does not live in forested country, so there is no ecological reason for 



w Kungl. Sv. Vet. Akad. Ilandlgr., 1924, p. 280. 

 »2Ibis, 1915, p. 267. 



