LANIARIUS ZTHIOPICUS 315 
answering female, the call and reply being so rapid that 
unless one actually has both birds in sight one would hardly 
imagine that the reply of the female could be so instantaneous. 
In addition to the call-note the male whistles an octave on 
a descending scale, and the female utters the ‘gurr’ typical 
of the Shrike family. I am aware that my explanation of 
the double note is opposed to the observations of Riippell and 
Blanford, but I state what I have myself observed.” 
Erlanger took a nest in an olive garden near Harrar on 
April 9, 1900, on which the female was sitting, but which 
contained as yet no eggs, though one was removed from the 
female. Thenest was placed about six feet up in an olive tree; 
it was a flat structure built up entirely of rootlets. 
Nearly all the collectors in Somaliland—Lort Phillips and 
Hawker, Hamerton and Bury—have also collected specimens 
of this Shrike and most of them have commented on the 
sweet, clear bell-like note of the male. 
Farther south, in British East Africa, a good series 
was collected by Doherty for the Tring Museum in Kikuyu. 
Hartert, who examined them, found two out of the thirteen 
collected had traces of white edges to the secondaries. 
Madarasz and Reichenow have distinguished subspecifi- 
cally the Boubou of Kilimanjaro by the more restricted 
amount of white of the wing. An examination of the Hast 
African examples in the British Museum shows that this 
slight distinction generally, but by no means invariably, holds 
good, but the variation in dimensions is very considerable. 
I doubt whether it is possible to distinguish L. somaliensis 
from southern Somaliland as well. The examples of this 
latter was obtained by Erlanger at Umfudu on the lower 
valley of the Juba or Ganale River in south Somaliland. 
The following examples of this species in the British 
Museum have been examined :— 
