•^2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I46 



miles of Mombasa (Mombasa, Kilifi, Mazeras, Takaungu, Rabai 

 Forest, Sokoke Forest) ; 1 came from Malindi; 3 from the lower 

 portion of the Tana Valley (Kosi, Kau, and near Lamu) ; one 

 example was recorded from southern Jubaland (Jebeir), the most 

 northern locality from which the black morph has been reported; 

 the type specimen (of "albonotatus," under which name this morph 

 of levaillantii was first described as a new form) was collected in the 

 Usambara Hills, northeastern Tanganyika, and another was taken not 

 too far away, on the Pagani River. The one remaining specimen, now 

 in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 

 was taken at an altitude of 10,000 feet on Mt. Kenya, in February 

 1919! This locality is far removed geographically and ecologically 

 from all the others. The specimen was originally in the Blayney 

 Percival Collection, and since Percival is generally considered to have 

 been a careful and reliable labeler of his birds, there is no valid reason 

 for questioning this record. 



It does, however, point out an interesting fact, namely that the 

 tendency to produce melanistic morphs is not absolutely restricted to 

 the area where these have become well established. While it cannot 

 be proved that this specimen from the high slopes of Mt. Kenya was 

 not a migrant from the coastal lowlands, this is extremely improbable. 

 It would be a strange migration indeed for a bird of the hot coastal 

 belt to migrate to an altitude of 10,000 feet on Mt. Kenya. Further- 

 more, we have no other evidence of the melanic morphs spreading out 

 from their restricted habitat, such as we might expect if they were 

 regularly migratory. Yet, it must be admitted that Percival (in 

 Bannerman, 1910, p. 704) wrote that "alhonotatus" seemed to visit 

 the coastal belt of Kenya for about 6 weeks only in the year, which 

 suggests seasonal movement. On the other hand, he collected two ex- 

 amples there in March, only a few weeks different in season from 

 his Mt. Kenya bird. It seems, from all these considerations, more 

 likely that the latter was a case of an individual melanism cropping 

 up as an isolated occurrence. It may be mentioned that there is 

 evidence of similar, sporadic, widely spaced cases of melanic poly- 

 morphism in C. jacobinus as well. 



In the latter species occasional black -phase birds, indistinguishable 

 from southeast African melanistic serratus, have been taken at Port 

 Gentil, Gabon (November 3), south of Lake Tchad (in July), at 

 Kulme, Darfur, Sudan (July 11), Kordofan, Sudan (no date) and 

 at Sagon River, Ethiopia (June 4). Reichenow (1902, p. 78) listed 

 the Kordofan record in the synonymy of the pale-vented jacobinus, not 



