Letters, Announcements, ^c. 253 



It is, however, a curious circumstance that the female of 

 B. moniliger is more uniform in colour and more rufous than 

 the male, the reverse of what is svipposed to be the case in 

 B. hodgsoni. Mr. Hume, who called my attention to this, 

 suggested that, after all, perhaps B. castaneus is the female 

 of B. hodgsoni. This I rather doubt, because the plumage of 

 the young bird agrees with the latter ; but the two plumages 

 (the rufous and the brown) differ too much for it to be pro- 

 bable that they are merely red and grey phases, irrespective 

 of sex. 



Since writing the above, however, I see that Dr. Jcrdon 

 (Ibis, 1871, p. 356) has already stated that Mr. Blyth consi- 

 dered Otothrix to be the male oi Batrachostomus . All that Mr. 

 Blyth stated, in his commentary on the ' Birds of India,^ was 

 that Otothrix is merely the adult phase of certain Batra- 

 chostomi. The fragments of two specimens oi Batrachostomus , 

 from Darjeeling, briefly described by Mr. Blyth in 1849 

 (J. A. S. B. xviii. p. 806), were at first referred by him to 

 B. affinis ; but subsequently, in his ' Catalogue of the Birds in 

 the Museum of the Asiatic Society,^ p. 81, he ascribed them 

 to " di nearly allied but distinct species.^^ From the descrip- 

 tion it appears probable that these specimens belonged to the 

 two forms subsequently described as Otothrix hodgsoni and 

 B. castaneus. 



Yours &c., 



W. T. Blanford. 



Simla, Octol)er 22nd, 1876. 



Sirs, — As there has been of late considerable confusion in 

 the nomenclature of the species of Tetraogallus, perhaps a few 

 words on the subject will not be out of place. 



The type of the genus Tetraogallus is generally admitted 

 to be a bird which was obtained by S. G. Gmelin at Astrabad, 

 in Northern Persia, and was called by him Tetrao caspius 

 (Reise d. Russl. th. iv. p. 67, pi. x.). Pallas subsequently 

 described and figured a bird procured in the Caucasus under 

 the name Tetrao caucasica (Zoogr. Rosso- As. vol. ii. p, 7Q, 

 pi.). Now, as the species of Tetraogallus found in the Cau- 



