58 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 22 3 



type of cross was reported by Abrahams (1939, pp. 303-204), who 

 collected a hybrid between the shaft-tailed widow bird and the para- 

 dise widow bird. 



Aside from the short tail of the nuptial male plumage, the com- 

 bassous are, it is true, slightly different in parts of their habits from 

 the long- tailed widow birds. The combassous are less aggressive and 

 pugnacious than the species of long-tailed widow birds, and the male 

 combassous are more inclined to use definite singing perches and to 

 bounce from these perches in their courtship antics, whereas the long- 

 tailed widow bu'ds do practically all their singing and courtship in 

 flight. These differences are slight and thus hardly constitute generic 

 characters. For convenience as a name by which to refer to the 

 combassous, Hypochera may be retained as a subgenus, but not as a 

 genus distinct from the long-tailed widow birds. Vidua proper. 



Included species and subspecies: It is difficult to determme with 

 certainty how many species of combassous are valid, which of the 17 

 described forms are races of which species, and which names are 

 synonyms. Much of the literature is of no great benefit, for there are 

 as many arrangements as there are arrangers. In recent publications, 

 Mackworth-Praed and Grant (1955) listed seven species from eastern 

 Africa alone; Chapin (1954) considered the forms found in the 

 Belgian Congo to fall into four species, of which he is uncertain of 

 the specific status of one; Delacour and Edmund-Blanc recognized 

 six species in their revision in 1934, but in 1951 Delacour reduced this 

 number to three; and Benson (1953, pp. 80-81) listed four species 

 from Nyasaland but raised the possibility that all may be only a single 

 species with color variants showing in the male nuptial plumage. 



On the basis of the material that I have examined, I have concluded 

 that there are only three valid species, one of which appears to have 

 wide variational limits, if not actual color phases, in the breeding 

 plumage of the adult male. I do not, however, in the present state 

 of our knowledge claim any finality for this arrangement. I am 

 aware of no characters or combination of characters by which females, 

 nonbreeding males, or young of the three species can be distinguished. 



The distiu-bing similarity in these critical plumages unfortunately 

 makes it impossible for us to utilize some of the published notes on 

 habits and occurrence. As Chapin (1954, p. 565) put it, we have as yet 

 no way of knowing "whether males of different colors may not associate 



