386 Letters, Announcements, fyc. 
his lamented death, had gone through all his manuscript with 
me at Chislehurst, and, while inviting the freest criticism, 
only made such alterations as he was satisfied in his mind 
were well founded. It is needless to say that I had but few 
corrections to suggest, and that Mr. Blyth exhibited all that 
accuracy, acuteness, and retentive power of memory for which 
he was so remarkable. In the Catalogue as it now appears 
in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, all the ad¬ 
ditions or observations made by me are enclosed in brackets, 
as stated by Mr. Grote in his introduction. 
On page 114, at no. 359, it will be found that Mr. Blyth 
identified Pellorneum subochraceum, _ Swinhoe, with his own 
species, Pellorneum tickelli, Blyth. Knowing that Mr. Blyth 
would not hazard such an identification without good grounds, 
and as I had never seen the type of P. tickelli, Blyth, I felt 
bound, as his editor, to accept Mr. BlytlFs views concerning 
his own species; and I therefore allowed the synonymy, as 
set forth by Mr. Blyth, to stand without alteration or remark. 
I felt that it would be somewhat presumptuous in me, with¬ 
out the type specimen in my own hand, to assume that Mr. 
Blyth did not know a species described by himself. I con¬ 
sequently accepted the titleP. subochraceum, Swinhoe, it being 
of more recent date, as a synonym of P. tickelli, Blyth. 
In 1873 Mr. Hume described (Str. F. i. p. 298) a species 
of Pellorneum from Thayetmyo under the title of P. minor. 
This is undoubtedly the same bird as P. subochraceum, Swin¬ 
hoe (Ann. N. H. ser. 4, 1871, vii. p. 257). In the Catalogue, 
no. 360, I therefore remarked that P. minor, Hume, was “ a 
synonym of P. tickelli” accepting that title on Mr. Blythes 
authority as being equal, though older, to P. subochraceum. 
That P. minor, Hume, was not a distinct species (I happened 
to possess a large series collected by Lieutenant W. Bamsay), 
that it had been described two years previously by Mr. Swin¬ 
hoe, was, while not a matter of great surprise, beyond all 
doubt when I wrote. But Mr. Oates has recently (Str. F. 1876, 
p. 406) endeavoured to show that I, not Mr. Blyth, have 
“ made a strange mistake ” in identifying P. tickelli with P. 
minor, or, in other words, with P. subochraceum. I do not 
admit that Mr. Blyth was wrong in his identification of P. 
