COLIUSPASSER ARDENS 41 
Male in breeding plumage. Black, with a broad scarlet collar across 
the base of the throat, the feathers of which pass into yellow and white 
at their bases. ‘‘ Bill, tarsi and feet black; iris brown.’ Total length 
12 inches, culmen 0:6, wing 38, tail 9, tarsus 0°85. ¢, 15. 3. 70. Alice, 
Cape Colony (Layard). 
Adult female. Above mottled, blackish brown with broad pale brown 
edges to the feathers; a well-marked yellowish white eyebrow and a patch 
of the same colour beneath the eye; a loral band and a band behind the eye 
black ; ear-coverts buffish brown ; under parts buff, with a slight yellow tinge 
on the chin and upper throat; lower throat, like the front and sides of the 
chest, washed with tawny brown, and marked with some slightly darker 
shaft-stripes; inner lining of the wings dusky ash, slightly paler on the 
coverts. ‘Iris brown; bill, tarsi and feet pale brown” (Stark). Total 
length 4:6 inches, culmen 0:55, wing 2°6, tail 1:8, tarsus 0°75. Pinetown 
(T. L. Ayres). 
Adult male in winter plumage. Similar to the female in the form of the 
tail and the general plumage; but the dark centres to the feathers of the 
upper parts blacker, the inner lining of the wing entirely black, and 
the under tail-coverts having black centres. ‘Iris dusky brown ; bill light 
horn colour, upper mandible darker; tarsi reddish brown; feet dusky.” 
$,8. 7.78. Rustenburg (W. Lucas). 
The Red-collared Whydah inhabits the eastern half of 
Africa south of the Equator and ranges into Angola. 
The type of Vidua rubritorques belongs to this species, and 
was probably a South African bird, and not captured in Sene- 
gambia, from whence Swainson nominally received it, for all 
the representative specimens I know of from West Africa, from 
the Congo northward, belong to C. concolor. Dr. Cabanis re- 
marks that in Major von Mechow’s collection, there were three 
specimens of C. concolor and one of C. ardens. The latter and 
a specimen presented to me by the late Mr. I’. T. Thomson, 
from Loando, are the only examples known to me of this 
species from any part of the West African subregion, or 
any place in Africa to the west of 24° EH. long. There- 
fore, I consider (. concolor to be specifically distinct from 
C. ardens. 
In Dr. Sharpe’s edition of Layard’s ‘ Birds of South Africa ”’ 
