344 Captain G. E. Slielley on the 
plumages in this and the next genus being almost identical 
in colouring. 
The members of the present genus appear peculiarly liable 
to melanism, and I consider it proved that the Vidua concolor, 
Cass., is nothing but a black variety of C. ardens, for in the 
Berlin Museum I have examined three specimens from Ma- 
lengue, in Angola—one entire black, labelled Penthetria 
concolor; another is the typical red-collared C. ardens; and 
the third is exactly intermediate, the collar being traced in 
dull red. Other varieties of this species I have seen with 
the collar orange. 
There is at present in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition 
a specimen of C. axillaris , in which the chestnut on the 
wings is reduced to only a few markings. The amount of 
rufous is not an absolutely constant character, for there is a 
specimen in the British Museum from Mombas in which the 
wing is unrecognizable from that of the Natal bird. I 
therefore consider C. phceniceus, Heugl., which I once 
described as Urobrachya zanzibarica , as only a variety with 
no positively constant characters, but the commonest form 
of this species north of the Zambesi. 
I have based my divisions of C. capensis with a large and 
small race, and C. xanthomelas as a subspecies, upon the 
colouring of the under surface of the quills, in the legs being 
paler and the thighs brown in C. capensis , while in C. xan¬ 
thomelas the thighs are black; but this latter character is 
subject to modifications. The Camaroons bird, type of Eu- 
plectes phoenicomerus, Gray, belongs to the small S.-African 
form. As the Camaroons is out of a natural range for this 
bird and no other specimens have been recorded from 
W. Africa, I should look upon it as possibly an escaped 
cage-bird. 
Key to the Species. 
a. Under wing-coverts entirely black. Tail very 
long. 
a}. Least series of wing-coverts scarlet, median 
series white. 79. C. procne. 
