Vol. xxxvi.] 42 



Mr. II. F. WiTHERBY made tlie following observations : — 



"At the last raeetiug apropos of the exhibition liy 

 Mr. Ogilvie-Grant of the three forms of Crested Tit, I asked 

 if any member of the B. O. U. List Committee could say 

 why Parus cristatus mitratus had been omitted from their 

 List. Mr. Grant, while stating that he was iinaware of the 

 reason, suggested that it might have been that my note on 

 the subject in 'British Birds' (vol. v. p. 110) was ambiguous. 

 I fail to see any uncertainty in my words, which w'cre : ' The 

 history of this specimen, now in Mr. Munn's possession, is 

 quite satisfactory, and it is the same as that mentioned by 

 Bury in the 'Zoologist' for 1844 (p. 639), so Mr. Munn 

 informs me. The bird is an undoubted example of the 

 Central European form, Parus cristatus mitratus.^ If this 

 statement was not clear enough, it would have been perfectly 

 simple for the Committee to have asked either Mr. Munn 

 or me for further details. Neither of us has been consulted. 

 The bird is not so much as mentioned in the B. O. U. List. 

 Had the evidence been considered not satisfactory, surely 

 the bird would have been placed in Appendix I. 



" Further, it is stated under ' Parus cristatus, Northern 

 Crested Titmouse' (p. 59), 'other English records of Crested 

 Tits probably relate to this form.' This statement can 

 surely only mean that while the Committee accept my identi- 

 fication of the Yorkshire Crested Tit as Parus c. cristatus, 

 they do not accept my identification (recorded on the same 

 page of ' British Birds') of the Isle of Wight specimen as 

 Parus c. mitratus. 



" If this is so, it seems to me rather an arbitrary action 

 without examinivg the bird. 



''I should like to add that it is stated in 'The Birds of 

 Hampshire and the Isle of Wight ' that Mr. Kelsall (one 

 of the authors) had seen this specimen in the collection of 

 Mr. Butler, who shot the bird near Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, 

 Mr. Munn, the other author of this work, obtained the 

 specimen from Mrs. Butler, who stated that it was certainly 

 the bird obtained by her husband. The Rev. C. A. Bury, 

 writing in the ' Zoologist ' for 1844 on ' The Birds of the 



