268 BULLETIN 15 3, UIsTITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



north of its breeding range, and somalicus to the south, a condition 

 that, in a limited area from 5° to 10° north of the Equator, is 

 hardly likely. If the birds were equatorial, such a condition might 

 be possible, but well to the north or south of the Equator no such 

 case is known. 



LANIUS DORSALIS Cabanis 



Lanius (Fiscus) dor sails Cabanis, Journ. fiir Orn., 1878, pp. 205, 225: Ndi, 



Kenya Colony. 

 Specimeovs collected: 



1 adult male, Tertale, Ethiopia, June 10, 1912. 



1 adult male, Mar Mora, Ethiopia, June 14, 1912. 



1 adult female, 18 miles south of Malele, Kenya Colony, July 28, 1912. 



The saddled fiscal shrika ranges from northeastern Tanganyika 

 Territory (Usambara and Kilimanjaro districts, north through 

 Kenya Colony (Teita to Sotik districts) to the Suk and Turkwell 

 country and thence to the Kendile country. Lake Stefanie, and ex- 

 treme southern Shoa, while along the coastal belt it occurs north 

 through the Somali regions to the Hand and northern Somaliland. 



Zedlitz ^^ has investigated the distributional and nomenclatural 

 problem presented by L. dorsalis and what he refers to as L. antinorii 

 (which is the same as L. somalicus of the present paper) and has 

 shown very well that while the two species are very similar, they 

 are quite distinct and occur together in much of their range. For one 

 thing, the sexes are similar in somalicus, while in dorsalis the female 

 has a mahogany brown spot on the sides which the male lacks. Those 

 who hold that Fiscus and Lanius are recognizable generic groups 

 would, to be consistent, have to put soTnalicus in the latter and dor- 

 salis in the former genus. Sclater ^^ separates Fiscus and Lanius be- 

 cause in the former "the sexes may be generally easily distin- 

 guished by the colouring of the flanks", but keeps somalicus in Fiscus, 

 although he admits that it has no sexual plumage dimorphism. In 

 my opinion there is little to be gained in keeping Fiscus separate 

 from Lanius; it does not appear to be a natural group, and is not 

 even a subgenus. Its only characters are those of color, and, as in 

 the present case of dorsalis and somalicus, this character can not be 

 used. 



This species may be easily told from somalicus by the fact that 

 the secondaries are entirely black in dorsalis and are very broadly 

 tipped with white in somalicus. 



The two specimens from Ethiopia appear to be the first ones re- 

 corded from that political area, although the species had previously 



«T Journ. fiir Orn., 1915, pp. 64-67. 



ss/w Shelley, The birds of Africa, vol. 5, p. 231, 1912. 



