232 



BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



investigators — Doctor van Someren. There are three recognizable 

 subspecies — (1) a dark, long-tailed bird with dark ashy-gray inner 

 edges on the remiges, occurring in Senegal; (2) a grayish-black 

 (lighter than No. 1) bird, smaller in size, with whitish inner margins 

 on the remiges, found in Ethiopia; and (3) an intermediate form 

 nearer to No. 2 than to No. 1 in size but with the inner margins of 

 the remiges ashy gray. The names to be used are as follows : 



1. Melaenornis edolioides lugubris (Miiller) : Ethiopia and the Su- 

 danese provinces of Sennar, Kassala, Bahr el Ghazal, and Lado En- 

 clave ; and northern Somaliland. This is the bird that van Someren 

 calls M. lugubris schistacea Sharpe and that has commonly been called 

 M. farriTnelaina Stanley in literature. Sclater -^ considers schistacea 

 a valid race inhabiting southeastern Ethiopia. 



Table 46. — Measurements of 21 specimens of Melaenornis edolioides lugubris 



from Ethiopia 



2. Melaenornis edolioides ugandae (van Someren) : Kenya Colony, 

 Uganda, eastern Belgian Congo, south to Mwanza, Tanganyika Ter- 

 ritory. 



3. Melaenornis edolioides edolioides (Swainson) : Senegal, Gambia, 

 Dahomey, Gold Coast, and Cameroon. This form has a much longer 

 tail than ugandae (107-116 mm in edolioides.^ 94^103 mm in uganda£,). 



The present race, lugubris^ is a denizen of the valleys and lower 

 reaches of the mountains of Ethiopia, where, according to Neumann,-^ 

 it appears to occur up to, but not above, altitudes of 8,000 feet. In 



=■ Systema avium .SIthiopicarum, pt. 2, p. 410, 1930. 

 » Journ. fiir Orn., 1905, p. 205. 



