238 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The subspecies found in northeastern and eastern Africa are as 

 follows : 



1. B. m. minor: Southern Somaliland. Characters: Small size, 

 wings, 51-54 mm. As pointed out by Neumann, the female type of 

 minor is really a female of Batis perkeo. 



2. B. m. erlangeri: Ethiopia, from the mountains near Harrar 

 south westward to the lake district of southern Shoa and the Djam- 

 djam country, probably also to the drainage basin of the Omo River, 

 south to the north end of Lake Stefanie. Characters: Similar to 

 minor but much larger, wings 60-G7 mm. The female has a darker, 

 duskier bay-brown pectoral band. 



3. B. m. chadensis: From Lake Chad through the upper Ubangi- 

 Shari region to Darfur and Kordofan and the northwestern Bahr el 

 Ghazal to the Lower White and Blue Niles and to the Red Sea 

 Province of the Sudan, intergrading with erlangeri on the Sudan- 

 Ethiopian border in the valleys of the Sobat, Blue Nile, and Baro 

 Rivers. Characters: Wing, 55 mm. The back in this race (which 

 I have not seen) is gray, washed with reddish. Grote,^^ however, 

 writes that the color character is more characteristic of young birds 

 than of adults. Furthermore, Lynes ^^ suggests that "seasonal 

 changes and first plumages will explain certain differences in colour 

 which have been related to geography." 



4. B. m. ny ansae: From Malakal and Lake No on the Upper 

 White Nile, and through the central and southern parts of the Bahr 

 el Ghazal Province, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, south through Uganda 

 to Lake Victoria, east to extreme western Kenya Colony (Kisumu, 

 Kaimosi, Kakamega, and the slopes of Mount Elgon). Characters: 

 Wings, 55-58 mm; the crown of the male with more metallic sheen 

 than in the last two, the breast band of the female lighter than in 

 erlangeri^ but darker than in minor; the back of the female not 

 piire gray, but lightly washed with olive-brown. 



5. B. m. siuihelicus: The coastal districts of southern Kenya 

 Colony and northern Tanganyika Territory (Mombasa to Dar es 

 Salaam and the Pangani River, inland to the Taru desert, the east- 

 ern Serengetti plains, and the Morogoro area). Characters: Similar 

 to erlangeri but smaller ; wings, 55-58 mm. 



The western races have been reviewed by Bannerman ^^ and need 

 not concern us here. 



Some authors have attempted to use the white on the outer rec- 

 trices as a systematic character, but the present series is very vari- 

 able in this regard. The two extremes in the width of the white 

 tips are 4.5 and 11 mm. In one specimen the white area does not 



"Journ. fiir Orn., 1904, p. 515. 



"2 Ibis, 1925, p. 124. 



"Rev. Zool. Africaine, vol. 9, pp. 415-416, 1921. 



