PARASITIC WEAVERBIRDS 57 



Of particular interest in connection with Neunzig's experiments is 

 the folloAving observation: In a live bird dealer's shop in Aachen, 

 Wolters (1943, p. 99) saw a male combassou with elongated middle 

 tail feathers. It was definitely not the blue widow bird. Vidua 

 hypocherina, as it had a white bill, whereas V. hypocherina has a bright 

 red one. Furthermore, only the median pair of retrices, not this pair 

 and the next pair, were elongated, and they were not as long as in 

 V. hypocherina, but merely twice as long as the lateral retrices instead 

 of being several times as long. They were also somewhat unequal, 

 the right one being slightly shorter than its left counterpart. In 

 other words, here was a nonexperimental bird that for some unknown 

 reason had also developed to some extent the trait of excessive median 

 retricial growth. Boetticher (1952, p. 65, footnote), went so far as to 

 suggest that V. hypocherina may be only a northern, long-tailed 

 race of the similarly red-billed combassou, V. amauropteryx, a 

 "peritype" is the sense used by some authors. 



The phylogenetic insignificance of rectricial elongation, which 

 argues against its use as a generic character, is shown in other groups 

 of birds. For example, within a single species of flycatcher of the 

 genus Terpsiphone some races have the median tail feathers greatly 

 elongated, while others have tliem no longer than the lateral ones. 



Further evidence of the close relationship of all the viduines is 

 afforded by the fact that the two extremes of the group — the com- 

 bassous and the paradise widow birds — have been known to hybridize 

 occasionally. One such example, described by A. Roberts (1926, 

 pp. 224-225) as a new bird under the name Microchera haagneri, 

 supposedly taken near Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, lived in the 

 Pretoria Zoo for three years, and molted each summer from a plain 

 winter plumage to a long-tailed black summer one. Another bird was 

 described as new under the name Prosteganura haagneri okadai by 

 Yamashina (1930, p. 11) and was based on a cage bird brought to 

 Japan from an unknown African source. These two instances are not 

 the only ones, as is indicated by Priest (1936, p. 364), who saw speci- 

 mens corresponding to them at Chipoli, Southern Rhodesia, but was 

 unable to obtain any, and by Alston (1951, p. 92), who reported seeing 

 another in the Umvukwe, not far from the escarpment of the Zambezi 

 valley in Southern Rhodesia, in late December, "a blackish-purplish 

 widow bird with four fluttering tail feathers and brownish edge to the 

 wings. ... It was just like the bird pictured as the 'purple widow 

 bird' [in Dr. Roberts' book], and in Captain Priest's book as the 

 'Okada's pintailed widow bird.' " Another specimen received in 

 England in a consignment of cage birds from Basutoland was reported 

 by Yealland (1959, p. 49) and by Everitt (1959, p. 96). Another 



