'4U — 



Family CORACIIDAE. 



Eurystomus afer afer. 



Coracias afra Latham, Tiul., Orn., T, 1710, p 172. — Tvpe loca- 

 litv : Africa. 



The West African Cinnainon Roller lias a wide range froin 

 Sénégal to Gaboon and several well marked races are tound in 

 other parts of the Continent 



Mr. LowE shot one bird onlv near Lagos. We hâve also in the 

 Muséum a sp :men from Rio del Rev (Sir H. Jc^hnston, 1887); 

 which since the new division of Cameroon, cornes well within the 

 British administration of S. Nigeria. From X. Nigeria \ve hâve a 

 spécimen from Shonga. 



In Northern Angola \ve find a richer coloured bird which 

 Necmann has named E. a. piilclieiriinus { f . f. ()., 1905, p. 186; 

 Malandje) but I do not agrée \vith Nel-manx that birds from the 

 Congo and Gaboon can be assigned to this race thongh, oi course, 

 examples oi pitlc/ierriinus mav be found within the political boun- 

 daries of thèse States, and this is doubtless what Nei;mann meant 

 one to infer. The spécimens in the British Muséum from the 

 Western Congo and Gaboon are undoubtedlv examples of E. a. 

 afer. How far eastwards the typical bird extends it is difhcuk to 

 sav. We hâve spécimens of E. a. afer from the Aruwimi river, 

 while a bird from Mawambi collected by Christy on the Ituri 

 river in the N. E. Belgian Congo, which should belong to the 

 Uganda form E. a. ncfobnccaiis, is in niv opinion an example of 

 ths tvpical species. 



Again two spécimens collected by the British Muséum Expédi- 

 tion at Fort Béni, Semliki vallev, were referred bv Ogii.vie-Gk.^nt 

 to E. a. afer {Traiis. Zool. Soc, XIX, 1910, p. 437) but they 

 bave blue upper tail-coverts and niust be E. a. siiahelicus from 

 Tingasi in the N. E. Belgian Congo. It appears probable that the 

 three forms overlap in distribution. The Bahr-el-Ghazal and Sudan 



