NO. 4 AVIAN GENUS CLAMATOR — FRIEDMANN 5I 



that lay eggs that are patterned, speckled, or blotched as well. The 

 situation in the species of Clamator is discussed below in detail for 

 each of the four forms, but in general it may be said that each species 

 has but a single tgg type, except for C. jacobinus, where we find two 

 types, but which are geographically distinct, so that even there, in any 

 one area there is but a single type. In C. levaillantii there is some, 

 as yet not wholly satisfactory, evidence for incipient tgg morphism; 

 in C. coromandus and in C. glandarius, only one type apiece occurs. 



Clamator jacobinus 



So evident does it seem that uniform white is the primitive egg- 

 shell type that I am influenced by it in considering the southeast 

 African (serratus) population of C. jacobinus, with its pure white 

 eggs, as the old, primitive portion of that species, and its other two 

 races, pica and jacobinus, with their pale greenish-blue eggs, as more 

 advanced. There is no other character that lends itself to judging 

 their relative phylogenetic positions. In all the great number of eggs 

 of this cuckoo taken in Ethiopia, the Somali Republic, Uganda, most 

 of Kenya, and in India, not a single one has been found that was not 

 plain, greenish blue. One white egg, taken from the oviduct of a 

 collected female, was reported from Doinyo Narok, in southern 

 Kenya, by Jackson (1938, pp. 495-496). One other white-shelled 

 oviduct egg obtained near Timbuctu in Mali (formerly part of French 

 Equatorial Africa) by Paludan (1936, p. 292). In an earlier study 

 (1949a, p. 20) I suggested that the white color of this particular egg 

 might have been due to the fact that it was "unfinished," an oviduct 

 egg not quite ready to be laid, and that it might have been about 

 to receive some bluish pigment. This has been countered by the re- 

 sults of Harrison's recent study (1963, pp. 154-155), which show that 

 the pigment is distributed throughout the thickness of the whole 

 shell in bluish eggs of this cuckoo. The example from Timbuctu, 

 therefore, must be looked upon as a definitely white egg. The white 

 Doinyo Narok example appears to have been even closer to laying 

 time when collected. These two are puzzling records that cannot be 

 "explained away" easily. The Doinyo Narok one is separated from 

 the nearest (more southern) record of a pure white jacobinus egg 

 by over 600 miles, the closest ones being from Nyasaland ! It may be 

 mentioned that the species has not yet been found to breed in 

 Tanganyika or in the northern half of Mozambique, so there are no 

 records of blue eggs between Doinyo Narok and Nyasaland either. 

 The Timbuctu specimen is even more remote from known white eggs 



