BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 213 



The distribution and characters of the forms more particularly 

 pertinent to the present report are as follows : 



1. P. m. mlstacea: The nominate race occurs from the Eritrean- 

 Ethiopian frontier south through Ethiopia to Arussi-Gallaland, 

 southern Shoa, west through Kassala, Sennar, Upper White Nile 

 and Mongalla Provinces of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, through 

 Darfur to northern Cameroon, the Lake Chad area. Northern Nigeria, 

 and the northern Gold Coast (in the Upper Guinean savannah belt). 



2. P. m. imnvufahilis: From the interior of northern Tanganyika 

 Territory and from the Ukamba region in Kenya Colony, west 

 through the highlands of the latter country, across Uganda, and, 

 according to Sclater,^^ to the southern part of Cameroon. Van 

 Someren ''^ merely states that this bird ranges west "to Elgon and 

 Uganda." This race differs from the typical one in that it has no 

 seasonal plumage dimorphism (which is conspicuously present in 

 mistacea), and has the interscapulars and back slightly more oliva- 

 ceous and the rump a little more rufescent than in mhtacea. Recent 

 authors have not commented on any dimensional differences between 

 these birds and examples of mlstacea^ but I find that typical speci- 

 mens of the latter, from Ethiopia, average a little larger than a 

 series of immiifahiUs, but a specimen of mistacea from the White 

 Nile is smaller than those from Ethiopia. I have not the material 

 to investigate this point but wonder whether mistacea may not be 

 a composite of two forms. It must be remembered, however, that 

 together with the larger birds there occur smaller ones (the so-called 

 murina Heuglin, which so puzzled Neumann when working over 

 his Abyssinian collections). 



3. P. m.. tenella : The coastal districts of eastern Africa from east- 

 ern Mozambique (Lumbo and Lower Zambesi Valley) north through 

 eastern Tanganyika Territory (inland to Morogoro, Kilosa, the Ulu- 

 guru and Usambara Ranges, and Mount Kilimanjaro) and eastern 

 Kenya Colony (inland to Taveta and Changamwe) north to the Juba 

 River and extreme southern Italian Somaliland. This form is some- 

 what smaller than hivmufahilis (wings, male 45.5-50, female 45-47 

 mm, as against male 49-53, female 47-52 mm in imiivxitahilis) . I do 

 not find the color characters to be of any reliable constancy. 



4. P. 711. graueri: Extreme southwestern Uganda and adjacent por- 

 tions of Tanganyika Territory, Urundi, Ruanda, and the eastern 

 Ituri district of the Belgian Congo south to the Katanga, Northern 

 Rhodesia, and the northern parts of Angola. This race is said to 

 be easily distinguished by having dark cinnamon-rufous edges to the 



" Systema avium ^thiopicarum, pt. 2, p. 570, 1930. 

 "Nov. Zool., vol. 29, p. 218, 1922. 

 106220—37 15 



