. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. Vol. 74 38 1954 horsbrughi but absent in furva; in this, and other, respects furva is closer to T. m. saturata Ogilvie-Grant of New Britain. The two New Guinea races are separated by a series of mountain ranges and Parkes (1949) believed that these mountains were a major barrier which prevented interbreeding and brought about this division in the species. But the discovery of the bird on the mountain grasslands around Mount Giluwe indicates that high mountains are not necessarily a barrier to distribution. This point is emphasized by the fact tha
. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. Vol. 74 38 1954 horsbrughi but absent in furva; in this, and other, respects furva is closer to T. m. saturata Ogilvie-Grant of New Britain. The two New Guinea races are separated by a series of mountain ranges and Parkes (1949) believed that these mountains were a major barrier which prevented interbreeding and brought about this division in the species. But the discovery of the bird on the mountain grasslands around Mount Giluwe indicates that high mountains are not necessarily a barrier to distribution. This point is emphasized by the fact that these brids lack the chestnut collar and are more closely related to furva than to horsbrughi and yet there is no mountain barrier between Mount Giluwe and the south-eastern coastal areas where horsbrughi is found: indeed, one of the tributaries of the Purari River, which flows into the Gulf of Papua, rises on the south slopes of Mount Giluwe. It may be that the tropical forest to the south with the absence of suitable habitat for the species is a more effective barrier than the mountain ranges, or the cause of such differences between races on the same land mass must be looked for, perhaps, in independent colonizations from widely separated sources of origin. However, it seems to me that as yet there are too few data on which to base any far reaching MAP OF NEW GUINEA SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE RACES OF TumiX maculosa. Although the present series was taken at between 7,000 to 8,000 feet the birds do not appear to exhibit the common altitudinal variation observed in other New Guinea species (Rand 1938), that is, birds from high altitudes are generally larger and darker in colour than those from the lowlands. The Mount Giluwe birds are as dark above as furva from the north-east coast and apparently smaller. I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Dean Amadon, of the American Museum of Natural History, for making a comparison between the. Please note that these
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