476 BULLETIN" 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



flecked, the spots extending on to the belly. This bird was said to 

 inhabit the Kikuyu and Ukamba regions of southern Kenya Colony. 

 Six years later Sharpe ^^ described another form, 'pallida^ differing 

 from nuhicus in its much lighter, paler color, and in the " * * * 

 complete and regular banding of back and wings * * *." 



Reichenow ^^ then decided that both iieumanni and 'pallida were 

 races of nuhica and that niger Neumann ^° was a distinct species. 

 Lest this discussion become needlessly involved, it may be said here 

 that niger is a straight synonym of nubica, a point that has been 

 fairly well settled and agreed upon for some time. We have here, 

 then, three races of Campethera nuhica. The subsequent literature 

 concerns itself mainly with the problem of testing the validity and 

 delineating the ranges of these races. It is true that Neumann ^^ 

 wrote definitely that neumanni was not a race of nubica but a distinct 

 species as he had collected both at Kwa Kitoto in the Kavirondo 

 country on the eastern shores of Lake Victoria. We shall come back 

 to this statement in a little while, and may turn our attention to the 

 main discussion of C. nubica. Erlanger ^- collected some 50 speci- 

 mens of the Nubian woodpecker (in Ethiopia and Somaliland) and 

 showed, for the first time, that the differences between nubica and 

 neu/manni could be accounted for by age, the latter being similar to the 

 young of the former, and also cast some doubt on the validity of 

 pallida by suggesting that that race was merely nuhica in very fresh 

 plumage, before any of the light margins had worn off. He also 

 worked out the sequence of plumages in this woodpecker, and in a 

 colored plate (pi. 12) showed the various stages and transitions. 

 This last part of his work is sound and is entirely substantiated and 

 corroborated by the series examined in the present study. 



Five years later Zedlitz ^^ raised the question as to whether scrlp- 

 toricafuda Reichenow °* might not also be a race of nubica. Aside 

 from this, his chief contribution to the subject is his summation of 

 color variation in this species — the higher in the mountains, the 

 darker the birds ; the lower in the steppes, the lighter the specimens. 

 But, he cautions, this has no bearing on geographic subspecies. 



C. H. B. Grant ^^ concluded after an examination of over a hundred 

 specimens that pallida was a valid form, that niger and neumanni 

 were synonyms of nubica., and that the then recently described alhi- 

 facies of Gunning and Roberts ^'^ was a recognizable race of this 

 species. He considers script oricauda a synonym of nuhica in spite of 



88 Ibis, 1902, p. 638: Lamu. 



soVog. Afr., vol. 2, pp. 178-179. 



"o Orn. Monatsb., 1902, p. 9 : Kaffa. 



"Journ. f. Ornith., 1904, pp. 394-395. 



seldom, 1905, pp. 475-477. 



»sidem, 1910, pp. 752-753. 



"Orn. Monatsb., 1896, p. 131; interior of Tanganyika Territory. 



^ Ibis, 1915, pp. 451-453. 



»« Ann. Transv. Mus., vol. 3. d. 112. 1911 : Villa Teriera, Borer. 



