The Red-billed Francolin Francolinus adspersus is the most xeric of a group of three ventrally scaled or barred phasianids more or less confined to the Southern African Subregion. Shown as exhibiting a measure of variation by R. Meyer de Schauensee in 1931 on the basis of a small sample from the Lake Ngami region of Botswana, few other authors have recognised F. adspersus as being other than a monotypic species. A reexamination of the case shows that the pale phenotypes named as F. a. kalahari are not confined to northern Botswana, but extend west to north-western Namibia and the midand lower Kunene R. valley of Angola, and effectively split the darker populations, which constitute the nominate race of de Schauensee. The males of the latter are also now found to range larger in size than those of the pallid, more desertic, population named kalahari. On the basis of a now enlarged range of characters, including a mensural one, and the determining of acceptable ranges for both pale (and small) and dark (and large) forms, the Red-billed Francolin requires to be seen as a polytypic species. Keywords: Francolins, monotypic, substrate colour response, arid zone, polytypic status.