1948. On the Name of the fbuth A,fricun Created Guineafowl. 401

The Name of the South Afriaan Crested Guineafowl. By AUSTIN ROBERTS.

IN ‘The Ibis’, 1944, pp. 166-171, pls. x.-xii., Lieut.-Colonel C. W. Mackworth-Praed and Captain C. H. B. Grant have again discussed the name to be applied to the Crested Guineafowl found in South Africa from Natal to the Zambesi Valley, and now raise new issues that are by no means settled. They come to the conclusion that the name of Guttera edouurdi Hartlaub and G. verreauxi Elliott are not synonymous, the latter being the West African bird, formerly known as Quttera cristata (Pallas), afterwards changed to G. pallasi Stone, because the name G. cristata was preoccupied, while the former is to be applied to the South African bird.

Various grounds are advanced for this, one being that the type of (3. edouardi in the Paris Museum has been found to have been painted red on the head and neck, from which they assume that it was not originally red on the throat, but seem to infer, though not stating so definitely, that it was painted red to conform with the description of C. verreauxi, presumably because the specimen is labelled as being the type of both G. edouardi and G. verreauxi. There is no evidence, of course, that it was not red before it was painted, nor when it was painted, so that an assumption that it was or was not red originally should not be used as an argument ; but we do know that Hartlaub in his original description compared i t with G. cristata and gave only the differences between the two supposed species, namely, the fold of skin in tqe hind neck and its extension to the sides and the downward extension of the black-feathered collar. It is logical to conclude that if the throat had not been red, Hartlaub would have said so, as constituting another point of difference. Moreover, when Elliot in ‘ The Ibis ’, 1870, p. 300, described C. verrebuxi, Hartlaub wrote a t once in ‘ The Ibis ’, 1870, p. 443, to point out that this was the same as he had named three years before, but a t the same time expressed a doubt as to whether G. rdouurdi was not the same as G. cristata, with which he synonymized it the same year in v. d. Decken’s . Reise ’, iv. 1870, p. 572. P. L. Sclater, upon a statement from Jules Verreaux that G. verreauxi was the same as G. edouardi, accepted this in the P. Z. S. 1871, p. 495, and again in P. Z. S. 1890, p. 87, a procedure that was followed by Ogilvie-Grant in the Cat. Birds B. M. xxii. 1893, p., 382, Reichenow (1900) and others until now. For more than fifty years collectors in South Africa have noted that the birds in life do not have red throats, as they were supposed to have if G. vprrmuxi was a synonym of G. edowrdi as placed in standard books,

Received 23 July, 1944.

402 Dr. Austin Roberts on the Name of the Ibis,

One of the arguments adduced is based on Jules Verreaux’s statement to Hartlaub that he had collected the type himself on the Natal coast :% years before, that is, in 1832. Against this is Jules Verreaux’s state- ment to Elliot in ‘The Ibis,’ 1870, pp. 300-301, that the only three specimens he had collected in 1827 had been lost in a shipwreck in 1840, and that “ during the several journeys into the interior he was never able to procure more ”. The present authors under discussion endeavour to explain certain discrepancies by suggesting that he had not collected them in 1827, but more probably 1837, because he was known to have sent a consignment of specimens by his brother to Paris before 1832, and the ship in which Verreaux’s specimens were lost was wrecked in 1838. It is clear that Verreaux was either wrongly interpreted or hazy in this matter, of which we have another instance in the case of Hypargos margaritatus, the type of which Jules Verreaux informed Elliot he had collected with a blowpipe in Cape Town-a record nobody has ever credited-a species which has since been found to occur from Inhambane to north-eastern Zululand.

In going into this matter, i t occurs to me that perhaps Jules Verreaux was having a little joke, first against Hartlaub, a German, and then Elliot, an American. In the first case, he asked Hartlaub’to name it after his brother Edouard, and when he spoke to Elliot about it three years later did not inform him that the specimen in the Paris Museum had already been named after his brother, but stated that his brother had brought it to Paris, and, like the two living specimens, it had come from Natal. According to the above authors, the type of G. edouurdi W ~ A presented to the Paris Museum in August 1850, and it seems strange that it only occurred to Jules Verreaux to have it named seventeen years later, by Hartlaub, when in 1851 and 1855 he and his brother had named SO many birds from Gaboon. I have not had access to the first of these papers, Rev. Mag. Zoo1 (2), iii. 1851, pp. 419424 and 513-516, of which there is a record in Reichenow’s ‘ Das Viigel Afrikas ’, i. p. lsxviii ; bnt the second, in Journ. f. Om. 1855, pp. 101-106, leaves no doubt that the brothers Verreaux actually did collect in Gaboon. In view of this, is it not possible that the type of G. edouurdi was a specimen from Gaboon, having regard to Hartlaub having placed it later in the synonymy of fl, cristata ? Jules Verreaux probably knew quite well that the specimen that was named after his brother was not from Natal, and when Elliot saw it and the two live specimens in Paris in 1870, carried his joke still further by saying that these two had also come from Natal. Mackworth- Praed and Grant have now concluded that. G. verreauxi is the same as (2. sristata, and, indeed, is the name that must be used because the earlier name is preoccupied ; but I cannot see why G. edouardi, of still earlier

1946. &uth African Crested C?wk?@wE. 403

dab, ehould not be taken as the correct name, in , view of the above history of the two names.

With regard now to “ proof” of the difference between Q. .edouurdi and 0. verreauxi, this is based upon a letter from M. Berlioz about the characters of the type of (7. edouardi, which is also labelled as the type of 0. verreauxi. In the first place, Elliot did not nominate a type, but described it from the two live specimens in Paris and the specimen in the Museum there, so that it was perhaps natural that the latter should have been labelled as the type of G. verreauxi as well; the two live specimens went to London subsequently, and when one died i t was sent to the British Museum of Natural History, and was subsequently dubbed the “ type )’, though actually only a “ lectotype.” It remains to be seen by comparison of his full description and measurements whether it actually is the type; but accepting it as the lectotype, it must be admitted that Elliot must have seen the type of G. edowtrdi when he was in Pans, since he mentioned it as “The first example. . . brought to Id’rance by the late M. Edouard Verreaux, a n d . . . now in the Paris Museum.” Elliot could not have been informed that this ‘‘ first example ” had already been named G. edouardi, or he ,would not have named it. Hence it was that Yartlaub wrote at once in ‘ The Ibis ’, 1870, p. 443, to say that he had named it three years before.

Upon one of the points mentioned as given in a letter to Kinnear from Berlioz about the type of G. edouardi, some doubt seems to ex5st about the folds of skin on the neck, not because it was painted, as these authors state, but from the make-up of the specimen. The fold of skin varies according to the way it is made up by different collectors, as can be seen in almost any collection of skins of this bird when from different skinners. In most of the skins I have examined, however, the fold conforms very much to the type shown in Mackworth-Praed and Grant’s plate x., which bears the caption Quttera edouardi edouardi, and in this figure, as well as our specimens, the fold does not reach down as far as the feathers of the hind-neck, which Berlioz states is the case in the type of G . edowtrdi. On the other hand, the fold does reach to, a rd even overlaps, the feathers on the hind-neck in the lectotype of 0. verreauxi and another specimen illustrated on plates xi. and xii., which seems to indicate that the type of 8. edouardi was more like the West African birds in that respect.

The only point that appears to carry conviction at first sight is Berlioz’s statement about the presence of faint brownish spots intermixed among the bluish-white spots, which the above authors state is “ a character not found in any Guttera from other parts of Africa ”. I have examined very few specimens of Guttera from beyond South African

404 On the Name of the &uth Africun Crested Guineafowl. Ibi8,

limits, and cannot therefore give an authoritative statement upon this point. Nevertheless, Chapin in ( Revue Zoologique Africaine ’, xi. p. 72, 1923, does record a case in which these faint marks are present in a specimen from the lower Congo region, and if the type of a. edouurdi came from Gaboon, as seems possible, in view of the brothers Verreaux having collected there somewhere about the time the specimen was presented to the Paris Museum, August 1850, is it not possible that this character of the faint chestnut spotting is found in birds from there as well as from South Africa‘? Considering how widespread the genus is in this continent, there are surprisingly few specimens in collections, and we have not yet heard the last that is to be said about the forms and their distribution. They are very local in habitat, and so far as I can judge by literature and the few specimens examined, I think that some of the so-called races are actually definite species.

Before closing, I must draw attention to some features of the above authors’ discussion to which exception must be taken. For example, on p. 168, third paragraph, they state (‘ the latter [Roberts] has credited Hartlaub with saying that that this supposed new species was the same ac) G. edouardi, a statement which he did not make, and we must go mtirely on an author’s exact wording of a description, and not put in statements that are not there ”. Hartlaub certainly did say this, that 0. verreauxi had already been named by him in 1867, as will be seen upon reference to ‘ The Ibis ’, 1870, p. 443. On the other hand, these authors certainly have misquoted me on p. 167, first paragraph : “ Hart- laub did not mention the red throat in B. edouardi because he confused it with a. cristata ”. I wrote ( ( compared ”, not “ confused ”, which is a very different thing. Then on p. 170 they state : (‘ Fortunately no authors have followed Dr. Roberts, and them is no doubt that Vincent” review is sound, and that he is correct in placing G. lividicollis as a synonym of Q. edouardi.” It is as well to remind these authors that “ comparisons are odious ) ) in this case, since the letter from Mr. Kinnear to which he refers arose from my objecting to Vincent’s rejection of the name of 0. 1. s y m i when he had not seen any specimens. That this race is valid is confirmed in ‘ The Ibis ’, 2944, p. 142, where C. M. N. White writes : “ The seven specimens of G . e . symonsi could easily be picked out from the series of Q. e . lividicollis without hesitation and without refex+ence to the labels.” On p. 170, a t the foot of tlk fifth paragraph, Msckworth-Praed and Grant appear to be aggrieved that I have not accepted Mr. N. B. Kinnear’s statement about the name of this bird. Mr. Kinnear was kind knough to write four pages to me on the subject, largely quotations from literature, in case I did not have access to it, though I had this literature with one exception, Elliot’s ‘ Monograph

1945. Hitherto unrecorded Birds in Central and South Bengal. 406

of the Phasianids ’ ; but I was no more convinced by this letter than I am now, that the type of a. edouardi came from Natal. Moreover, after quoting what Elliot said in his Monograph, Mr. Kinnear (who wrote this letter in conjunction with Captain C. H. B. Grant), stated : ’‘ It would be necessary to have the types of this species and Hartlaub’s together to settle the doubt satisfactorily ; and, therefore, I prefer to follow him in leaving N . edouardi as a synonym of cristata, and for the present retain the name of N . verreauxi for the present bird”*. This is the direct opposite of the conclusion now come to, but in justice to Mr. Kinnear I may add that a t the conclusion of his letter he wrote : “ As regards G. verveauxi, it certainly did not come from Natal, and most likely was a West coast bird, but we have not decided yet, and I will write to you again later.” Is it surprising that I have still the same opinion as I had before, viz. that neither of the types came from Natal, in view of these contradictions ‘1

Note on the Occurrence of some hitherto unrecorded Birds in Central and South Bengal.,

By SATYA CHURN LAW, M.A., Ph.D., F.N.I. Received 16 August, 1944.

Malacocincla sepiaria abbotti (Blyth). The habitat of Abbott’s Babbler in the plains of Bengal is stated in

‘ The Fauna of British India ’ as the eastern portion of the province. This+ seems,to be based on the records of Tytler in A. M. N. H. xiv. ser. 2, p. 174 and Cripps in S. F. vii. p. 277, the former having obtained it a t Dacca and the latter in the western part of Paridpur.

Thick or deep, green and humid forest is recorded to be its haunt, where it creeps about brushwood and canebrakes, not being seen, according to Cripps, “ high up in trees ”.

Curiously enough I have come across this bird in the groves, bushes and jungles of Jessore and Khulna. Both these districts are contiguous to Faridpur. The meteorological conditions prevailing in all of them are almost similar. Jessore has an average humidity of 85 per cent., Faridpur 84 per cent., and Khulna 81 per cent. The flora and vegetation in Jessore and Khulna are typical of that of Central and South Bengal. Thicket, overgrown waste land, cane and bamboo jungle abound to a greater extent in Jessore, while there are more orchards, mango and tree groves in Khulna.

* The words ‘‘ It . . . bird ” are quoted from Elliott, Mon. Phas. ii . 1872, and aic

VOL. 87. 2E not a statement by Mr. N. R, Kinnear.-E~lTOR,