The Melba Finch or Green-winged Pytilia Pytilia melba (Linnaeus), 1758: Angola, is a small, and in the male prettily coloured, species of thorn-tangles and thickets with a wide distribution in the lightly wooded savannas of Africa south of the Sahara. Polytypic variation is well developed, six or seven races being recognized in recent standard works on Ethiopian birds, although between fifteen and eighteen subspecies have been proposed from time to time by various specialists. In South Africa Systema Avium Aethiopicarum, part ii, 1930, p. 787; Roberts, Birds of South Africa, 1940, p. 355; Vincent, Check List of the Birds of South Africa, 1952, p. 110; Chapin, Birds of the Belgian Congo, part iv, 1954, pp. 509-510; Mackworth-Praed and Grant, Birds of Eastern and North-Eastern Africa, 1955, p. 1008, etc.), but study of the adequate material now available in southern African museums shows that such a view is not strictly correct and that in actual fact two racial groups of populations can be conveniently recognized from within the confines of the sub-continent. It has been found that adult males of the populations resident in the dry western and central districts (i.e. northern Great Namaqualand, Damaraland and Ovamboland to Bechuanaland, most of Southern Rhodesia and the western parts of the Transvaal) have wings 60-62.5mm., a usually completely orange-red culmen and the red of the face and throat a deep, dull vermilion, whereas those of the moister eastern lowlands (Natal and Zululand, Swaziland, eastern "lowveld"’ of the Transvaal, and southern Portuguese - East Africa to the Zambesi River) have the face and throat paler and pinker even occasionally peach-coloured. The males of the eastern low-country - populations also differ in being smaller (wings 55.5-60 mm.), in having the culmen dark flesh brown, and in being darker dorsally, especially in the grey of the crown and nape. However, females of the two racial groups of populations do not appear to differ in colour and only slightly on mensural grounds.