BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 303 



Soft parts : Iris hazel ; bill and claws black ; feet plumbeous. 



The geogi'aphic races of the orange-breasted bush-shrike are ren- 

 dered somewhat obscure by the relatively great individual non- 

 geographic variations of this bird, but, on the whole, five forms 

 appear to be recognizable. In each case the characters are average 

 ones, and it is therefore not surprising that several investigators 

 have decided against them and recognize no subspecific groups. 

 Gyldenstolpe ^^ and Sclater and Mackworth-Praed ^® are among those 

 who conclude that the individual is greater than the geographic 

 variation in this species. The forms that I find tenable are as 

 follows : 



1. G. s. sulfureopectus : Senegal to the Gold Coast and Togoland 

 east to the White Nile and Bahr el Ghazal districts of the Anglo- 

 Egyptian Sudan, the Uelle district of the Belgian Congo, and to 

 southwestern Kenya Colony (Nandi, Elgeyu, etc.). This form is 

 characterized by having blackish auriculars. Gyldenstolpe tenta- 

 tively admits the distinctness of this form from the birds of southern 

 and eastern Africa, although he refrains from trinomials. In the 

 eastern part of its range (Uganda and southwestern Kenya Colony) 

 this form has a tendency to average paler, a fact that led van 

 Someren " to call his Ugandan series raodestus of Bocage. 



2. C. s. simUis: South Africa from the eastern part of the Cape 

 Province northward through Natal and the Transvaal to southern 

 Mozambique and Southern Rhodesia (Gazaland). Characters — 

 auriculars grayish or grayish black; the orange color on the breast 

 very strongly developed, the area involved being larger and the color 

 deeper than in sulfureopectus ,' the forehead orange-yellow. 



3. C. s. modestus: Northern Angola, east through the Katanga to 

 the Marungu plateau, eastern Belgian Congo. This race is paler 

 on the breast than any of the others and has no black beneath the 

 eyes, the auriculars being grayish. 



4. G. s. suahelicus: Eastern Africa from central Mozambique north 

 through Tanganyika Territory and southern Kenya Colony east of 

 the Rift Valley, and along the coast to southern Somaliland. Occa- 

 sionally west of the Rift Valley (specimen from Kakamega ex- 

 amined) . This form is similar to similis, but diiOfers from it in that it 

 has the forehead and the inner margins of the rectrices yellow, not 

 orange-yellow; size slightly smaller; wings, 83-92 mm, as against 

 89-99 mm. 



5. G. s. frichi: Southern Ethiopia (Shoa and Arussi-Gallaland) 

 to northern Kenya Colony south approximately to the Northern 

 Guaso Nyiro River. Similar to suahelicus but with the green color 



ifi Kongl. Svenska Vet.-Akad. Handl., 1924, pp. 115-116. 



" Ibis, 1918, p. 632. 



" Nov. Zool., vol. 29, p. 114, 1922. 



