123 
Lettersj Announcements, ^c. 
soft mass of lichens, overlaid with a soft downy vegetable 
substance, blended into a sort of felt/^ 
Now, when Mr. Hodgson enters the sex in bis own hand, 
with a full structural description, he has invariably ascer¬ 
tained the sex by dissection. 
But, as every one knows, a single dissection cannot always 
be relied on, injury by shot, disease, partial decomposition 
of the specimen will at times mislead the most careful ob¬ 
servers, and they will put down, without any doubts in their 
own minds, a single specimen as male or female, and then 
find out later, when they come to deal with a series, that 
they have somehow made a mistake. Such cases, however, 
form the exception, and not the rule. 
Therefore when I first wrote I thought it probable that 
Mr. Hodgson (although he had had only a single specimen 
before him) was correct in the sex which he had recorded, 
undoubtedly from dissection. But later, when I obtained 
Mr. Bourdillion’s evidence, and other collateral evidence which 
I did not think it necessary to refer to, T began to entertain 
the probability that Mr. Hodgson had been in some way de¬ 
ceived. There is no uncertainty as to Mr. Hodgson’s having 
been of opinion that he had made out the bird to be a female 
by dissection. The uncertainty is as to whether he was cor¬ 
rect in that opinion, or whether, as will, at times, happen to 
the most accurate observers, he was misled by deceptive ap¬ 
pearances due to any of the causes above referred to. Fortu¬ 
nately I shall be able to produce conclusive evidence on this 
moot point, and shall now only draw attention to SchlegeFs 
remark (J. f. O. 1856, p. 460) :—Bei alien indischen Po- 
daryen sind die Mannchen grau, die Weibchen rostfarben.” 
Yours truly, 
A. O. Hume. 
P.S. (26th October). 
I have only just discovered that I myself am, in a mea¬ 
sure, to blame for the error into which Lord Tweeddale has 
(in my opinion) fallen, about Batrachostomus castaneus, B, 
affinis, and B. javanensis apud Blyth. 
