391 
Letters, Announcements, §c. 
to only a probability, and in the absence of the exact words 
used by Mr. Hodgson when recording the fact of having dis¬ 
sected the bird (if any such exist), there need be little hesi¬ 
tation in now reframing the synonymy of the species thus :— 
B. affinis, Blyth ,—Bodargus parvulus, Temm ., = Otothrix 
hodgsoni, G. It. Gray,=B, castaneus, Hume. 
But the key-stone of Mr. Blanford^s contention is the 
statement that the three specimens in Mr. Hume j s collec¬ 
tion, of what Mr. Blanford identifies with B. affinis (but 
which I venture to contend are B. javensis, apud Blyth, = 
B. stellatus=B. stictopterus) “have been compared with 
Blyth’s original type in Calcutta.” I do not quite gather 
whether Mr. Blanford himself personally compared Mr. 
Hume^s three specimens with the type of B. affinis , or whether 
Mr. Blanford accepted the correctness of the identification at 
second hand. Will Mr. Blanford kindly investigate the 
history of the specimen he alludes to as being Mr. Blythes 
type of B. affinis ? Mr. Blyth described the species from a 
Malaccan skin obtained through Mr. Frith in 1847. If my 
own personal knowledge of B. javensis, apud Blyth (dating 
back, and continued since, some thirty years), and if the pub¬ 
lished descriptions and remarks of Mr. Blyth did not irre¬ 
sistibly oblige me to doubt the authenticity of the specimen 
Mr. Blanford (as described by him) accepts as the type of 
B. affinis, I would refrain from asking him to take the trouble 
of re-examining it. If it be the type specimen of B. affinis, 
what is B.javensis, apud Blyth, ex Malacca? for neither 
B. javensis, Horsf., nor its ally, Podargus cornutus, Temm., 
occur in Malacca, so far as is at present known. 
Mr. Blanford further states his opinion that B. punctatus, 
Hume, is distinct from B. moniliger, Layard. Specimens of a 
species of Batrachostomus, from Travancore, are identified by 
Mr. Hume withB. moniliger, a species described from a Ceylon 
example, while B. punctatus, Hume, ex Ceylon, is assumed not 
to belong to B. moniliger, but to be a new species. Four phases 
of B. moniliger are represented in my series of Batrachostomi 
ex Ceylon; and one of the phases, that assumed by the almost 
adult male, agrees, feather for feather, with Mr. Hume’s de¬ 
tailed description. Mr. Hume’s single example and type 
