396 Capt. G. E. Slielley on a 



The present specimens (an apparently adult and an imma- 

 ture bird) have the bill black 5 and Mr. Lort Phillips assures 

 me that although the bird is common in Somali^ he never 

 saw a red-billed specimen. 



They belong to the dark-billed race^ well figured by Gray 

 and Mitchell, /. c. This race inhabits Somali, Shoa, Abys- 

 sinia, and Senegambia, and to it belong the nine specimens 

 recorded by Count Salvadori as collected by the Marquis 

 Antinori in Shoa, seven specimens in the British Museum 

 fi'om Abyssinia, and nine specimens I have examined from 

 Senegambia. 



To the typical red-billed race belong thirty-seven speci- 

 mens I have examined from localities south of the equator ; 

 of these, twenty-three S. -African, and seven E. -African from 

 Dar-es-Salam to Mombas, have entirely red bills, and the re- 

 maining seven have black bills, but show evident signs of 

 immaturity. 



My reason for not separating these races rests upon the 

 following data : — There are two typical red-billed specimens 

 in the British Museum, labelled respectively '' Darfur " and 

 " N.E. Africa.^^ One of Mr. Blanford^s specimens from the 

 Anseba valley has the bill half red and half black ; the black 

 in this specimen extends on the upper mandible in a sharply 

 defined broad band from the nostrils, and covers the end 

 third of both mandibles. Von Heuglin describes in his 

 . large work an entirely red-billed bird, which I presume was 

 a N.E.- African specimen. 



In the British Museum there is a remarkably purple- 

 coloured specimen, labelled " (J, Objimbique.^'' It has a 

 reddish-black bill. These colours, however, are not sharply 

 contrasted as in all the mottled-billed birds I have seen from 

 north of the equator. 



In the black-billed race the plumage is almost invariably 

 more purple, the presence of a bright green gloss on the 

 crown and mantle being rare, although occasionally present, 

 but never, it appears to me, to the same extent as in the 

 typical red-billed specimens. 



Although generally the northern and southern forms may 



