290 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Neumann ^^ pointed out that Shaw states that his new bird "is 

 accurately described by Monsr. Levaillant. * * * it appears so 

 nearly allied to the Senegal Shrike as to make it doubtful whether 

 it may not in reality be the same species." Neumann therefore con- 

 cludes that erythropterus must be the South African and not the 

 Senegalese bird. Before Neumann's paper appeared, Oberholser,"^ 

 assuming that erythro'pterus was based on a bird from Senegal, named 

 a form from East and South Africa armenus. The type locality of 

 armenus is Taveta, near Mount Kilimanjaro, and while some investi- 

 gators consider East African birds distinct from those of South 

 Africa, and therefore use armenus for the former, I can find no tangible 

 differences between specimens from the two regions. Oberholser's 

 armenus therefore becomes a synonym of erythropterus. In 1922, 

 van Someren *^ declared that Neumann was mistaken in using Shaw's 

 erythropterus for the South African form — 



"* * * because Shaw founded this name on Daubenton's (Buffon's) 

 Blanche Enluminde, 479, which distinctly depicts a bird with a black head, and 

 the locality is given as "Senegal" ! Shaw states that possibly his bird is the 

 same as the Senegal Shrike of Linnaeus, H. senegalus, and in this he is cor- 

 rect. His further remarks to the effect that Levaillant had accurately de- 

 scribed ''erythropterus" in Hist. Nattir. (1799), no doubt referred to the second 

 part of the general remarks made by Levaillant and not to his diagnosis. 

 Now, turning to Levaillant's plate 70 (1799), we find that the bird there 

 depicted is one with a iroivn crown and a long slender hill, i. e., undoubtedly 

 the bird now known as H. longirostris, the Tshagra Shrike. The first descrip- 

 tion, which we must accept, says that the bird has the top of the head UacTc- 

 brown with olive wash — not black, and further describes a white line from the 

 base of bill to nape * * * and the whole of the underside "ashy". That 

 fits undoubtedly H. longirostris, not senegalus. In further remarks it appears, 

 no doubt, that the black-headed South African bird was confounded with the 

 brown-headed; but this does not alter the first description, nor the plate of 

 an "adult male and female." 



On the basis of this line of argument, van Someren, feeling that the 

 South African birds differ from those of Senegal and of East Africa, 

 proposes the name confusus, based on a bird from Umfalozi, Zulu- 

 land. Now, as already intimated, I can see no difference between 

 South and East African birds, so whatever the status of erythr^opterus 

 it is clear that confusus is nothing but a synonym of armenus. The 

 question, then, is whether armenus or erythropterus is the correct 

 name of the Soutli African birds. I have carefully examined the 

 figure in Levaillant's work and find that van Someren has mis- 

 identified it. It represents not the brown-headed Pomatorhynchus 

 tschagra (which van Someren calls longirostris)., but a subadult 

 black-headed P. senegalus. The top of the head is much blacker than 



^ Journ. fiir Orn., 1907, p. 367. 



»8 Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 30, 1906, p. 809. 



" Nov. Zool., vol. 29, pp. 112-113, 1922. 



