4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 56 



Description. — Upper parts brownish gray, slightly rvifescent on 

 the crown ; feathers of mantle and crown centrally striped with dark 

 brown ; wing-coverts and quill-feathers dark brown with broad 

 hoary edging; feathers of rump and upper tail-coverts cinereous, 

 with obsolete median dark streaks ; rectrices dusky brownish gray, 

 obscurely fasciated, all but the central pair with a broad subter- 

 minal band of black and pure white tip ; lores and sides of face, 

 below eye, white ; ear-coverts pale grayish brown ; under parts white 

 with a faint tinge of bufif across chest and along sides ; edge of wing 

 white ; under wing-coverts creamy white ; inner border of quill- 

 feathers buffy white ; under surface of rectrices gray, all but the 

 middle pair crossed by a subterminal black bar seven millimeters in 

 width and broadly tipped with pure white. Bill, in dry specimens, 

 pale brown above, flesh color on mandible and sides of maxilla ; feet 

 and claws light brown. 



Measurements of type (adult male). — ^Length (of skin), 115; 

 wing, 63 ; tail, 57 ; culmen (chord), 13 ; tarsus, 23. 



Measurements of adult male topotype. — Length, 115; wing, 67; 

 tail, 55 ; culmen (chord), 12; tarsus, 24. 



Material. — Two adult males, collected by Dr. Glover M. Allen, on 

 the Meru and Guaso Nyiro Rivers, north of Mount Kenia, in 

 British East Africa. 



CISTICOLA STRANGEI KAPITENSIS, new subspecies 



Kapiti Plains Grass-Warbler 



Type-specimen.— Adult male. Cat. No. 213547, U. S. N. M. Col- 

 lected at Potha, altitude 4250 feet, Kapiti Plains, British East Africa, 

 April 29, 1909, by Edgar A. Mearns. Original number, 15644. 



Characters. — Most closely related to Cisticola strangei pachy- 

 rhyncha (Heuglin),^ from the " forest-region of Bongo, in Central 

 Africa," from which it dififers in being much paler and more grayish. 

 Cisticola argentea Reichenow," which is apparently a subspecies of 

 Cisticola strangei (Eraser),' is larger, grayer, and with more gray- 

 ish sides than the present form. The salient differences in three 

 closelv related forms of Cisticola strangei may be stated as follows : 



'Ibis, 1869, pp. 130 and 131, in text (new name for valida Peters). 

 ^Ornith. Monatsb., Vol. 13, 1905, p. 25. 



'^ Drymoica strangei L. Fraser, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., Pt. 11, No. 121, 

 July. 1843, p.Ti6. 



