253 
Letters , Announcements , fyc. 
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 supposed to he 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. Jerdon 
(Ibis, 1871, p. 356) has already stated that Mr. Blyth consi¬ 
dered Otothrix to be the male of Batrachostomus. All that Mr. 
Blyth stated, in his commentary on the f Birds of India/ was 
that Otothrix is merely the adult phase of certain Batra- 
chostomi. The fragments of two specimens of 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 f Catalogue of the Birds in 
the Museum of the Asiatic Society/ p. 81, he ascribed them 
to a 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, October 22nd, 1876. 
Sirs,— As there has been of late considerable confusion in 
the nomenclature of the species of Tetraogalius , 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. 76, 
ph). Now, as the species of Tetraogallus found in the Cau- 
