/» • . T ** NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE Vol. XXXV. SEPTEMBER 1929. No. 2. ON VARIOUS FORMS OF THE GENUS TYTO. By ERNST HARTERT. TYTO ALBA AND ITS SUBSPECIES. rPHE examination of a Barn-Owl, the first recorded from the Solomon Archipelago, which had been collected by R. H. Beck on Vella Lavella Island, 11 Nov. 1927, when he was leader of the first Whitney South Sea Expedition, led me to revise the Barn-Owls, a genus of birds which contains some of the most beautiful birds, and of which I have been always particu-larly fond. When Sharpe monographed this group in vol. ii of the Cat. B. Brit. Mus. (1875), he did much the same as we do now, as regards species, distinguishing specifically " Strix flammea and allies," Strix novae-hollandiae, tenebricosa, capensis, and Candida, but he declared all the various names given to subspsecies of " flammea" to be, in his opinion, synonyms, while he separated the closely allied castanops as a subspecies of novae-hollandiae. This was not consistent or logical, as many of the subspecies of "flammea," which he treated as synonyms, are much more different from the first-named, European, form, than castanops is from novae-hollandiae. Sharpe's volumes of the Catalogue of Birds are immortal, and generally the best of that famous series, but it must not be forgotten that the idea of subspecies was then very vague, and the following quotation will show how little material was expected at the time. Sharpe wrote in 1875, i.e. over half a century ago : " It is seldom that an opportunity is afforded to the ornithologist of examining such a fine series of birds as has been permitted to use in the case of the Barn-Owls ; and it would be difficult to find a more comprehensive collection that at present exists in the British Museum." Yet he had only 116 specimens from all over the world of what he called Strix flammea, while the Museum now contains many many more, and there are now before me in the Tring Museum no less than 435 skins. Moreover, when Sharpe wrote that, there were vast regions of the world unexplored, and especially many of the Indo-Malayan and Australian Islands were only touched or entirely unexplored. While some forms are fairly widely spread, others are more local, and insular forms are often very well marked. I can now distinguish the following subspecies : 7 "J3
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