Letters, Announcements, fyc. 
387 
subochraceum with P. tickelli; for, with the greatest respect 
to the superior knowledge of Mr. Oates, I am inclined (per¬ 
haps from mere editorial partiality) to believe that Mr. Blyth 
was as likely to know as much, I will not say more, about 
the specimen and species he himself had described, than 
even Mr. Oates, who had never seen it. But if there is an 
error on my part in referring P. minor, Hume, through P. 
subochraceum, Swinhoe, to P. tickelli, Blyth, it must be Mr. 
Blythes “ dictum/’ and not mine, “ that will not be readily 
accepted by those who are conversant with local Indian 
ornithology 33 
Mr. Oates speaks confidently of having seen and shot P. 
tickelli, Blyth, on the Pegu hills. Mr. Hume, in his “ List 
of the Birds of Upper Pegu - ’'’ {op. cit. 1875, p. 119), goes no 
further than to “ suppose 33 that the only specimen sent to 
him by Mr. Oates belongs to P. tickelli; and Mr. Oates {l. c .) 
remarks that that “ specimen agrees pretty well with BlytlPs 
meagre description.” But when it becomes an object to 
impress on the readers of f Stray Feathers 3 that I, in my 
capacity of Mr. Blythes editor, have arrived “ at hasty and, 
in many cases, erroneous conclusions,” then the fact that it 
was Mr. Blyth, and not I, who identified his own species with 
one that is notoriously the same as P. minor, is omitted, Mr. 
Hume’s bare “supposition” becomes a demonstrated fact, 
and “Blyth’s meagre description,” with which Mr. Oateses 
solitary specimen only a agrees pretty well,” is considered, 
along with Tickell’s (which is as meagre, and was also before 
Mr. Oates), “to give us all the really essential particulars of 
the plumage.” 
But, Sir, what will probably more interest you and your 
readers is, whether I was justified in treating the title of P. 
minor, Hume (lege minus), as a synonym of some previously 
described species. Upon this point there is no doubt; for I 
have taken the trouble to again examine the type of P. sub¬ 
ochraceum. 
I remain, yours, 
Tweeddale. 
Ohisleliurst, April 26, 1877. 
