8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I45 



uate in the present connection. He does consider the waxbills a sys- 

 tematic family, but he gives no arguments or data either supporting or 

 contradicting this treatment. The data he does present are not given as 

 systematic criteria and show nothing pecuHar to the "Spermestidae." 



The problem as to which of the numerous described species or 

 races of the combassous are really valid still awaits an answer based 

 on much more extensive and more complete knowledge of them in 

 the field. From my own field studies of many years ago and from 

 much more recent examination of large numbers of museum speci- 

 mens I arrived at the arrangement given in my i960 publication. 

 However, almost simultaneously, Wolters (i960) proposed a some- 

 what different treatment, based in part on observations of aviary 

 birds. These differences are not particularly important, as no one 

 has the data on which to formulate a completely convincing and 

 wholly satisfying classification, but they do point out that until such 

 information is assembled, all our judgments can have only limited 

 validity. In our understanding of the combassous, as contrasted with 

 the present knowledge of the long-tailed viduas, we are still con- 

 fronted with the species of the systematists rather than the species 

 of the naturalists. This is bound to continue until the living birds 

 are studied much more thoroughly, as further examination of their 

 preserved corpses will only lead to divergent and inconclusive 

 arrangements. 



Still more recently, Wolters (1961) has published an arrangement 

 of the viduines in which the short -tailed species (subgenus 

 "Hypochera") are placed at the top, whereas I put them at the base 

 of the group. Wolters considers the absence of elongated rectrices 

 in the breeding plumage of adult males to be a secondarily arrived 

 at condition, and that the long-tailed species (subgenus Vidua 

 proper) are to be looked upon as representing the original, ancestral 

 character of the group. Also, he suggests that Steganura is the basic 

 or primitive member of the viduines, whereas I placed it at the apex 

 of the assemblage. While it is obvious that each of us came to our 

 respective conclusions on the basis of all the evidence we could 

 muster, it now becomes clear that, in the absence of any really con- 

 clusive data, these alternate, and, in fact, opposite, arrangements can 

 only be looked upon as interpretations of the purely circumstantial 

 evidence afforded by the appearance and the habits of the existing 

 species. Actually the two classifications agree closely in the relative 

 placement of the included species and genera, but differ in their over- 

 all orientation. 



