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Show 1877.] THE MARQUIS OF TWEEDDALE ON BATRACHOSTOMUS. 423 of B. moniliger, Layard, collected in Cevlon, by Mr. S. Chapman (mus. nostr.) is marked " sex, female.'' A grey-brown speckled i1 v. u S a m C sPecies' obtained at Ratnapura, in Ceylon, is marked d by the collector, Mr. H . Nevil (mus. nostr.). Of two individuals belonging to the genus recentlv obtained in Travancore by Mr. Bourdillon, and referred by Mr. H u m e (/. c.) to B. moniliger, liayard, one, in rufous plumage, said by Mr. H u m e to agree with the description oi the Ceylon type, is marked female by the collector; the other, in grey-and-brown freckled and mottled plumage, is marked a male. A. single specimen of a new species from Mindanao, discovered by the naturalists of the < Challenger' Expedition, is inrufous- . brown striated plumage; and the sex is stated on the label to be female. Lieut. Wardlaw Ramsay ascertained the sex of a Batrachostomus obtained by him on the Karen hills (5000 ft. elevation) to be male; and this individual is in grey-and-brown mottled plumage, hardlv distinguishable from the type of Otothrix hodgsoni and from grey-and-brown mottled examples of B. affinis, ex Malacca. Of B. stellatus ( = B. stictopterus, Cab.) I have never seen examples in grey plumage. It is a common bird in Malaccan collections ; and I have examined a great number of individuals. It has two phases of plumage-bright rufous or rufous bay, and dark brown and rufous brown. Younger birds possess either of these hues, but have the upper plumage striated. Count Salvadori's Latin description, taken from three Sarawak individuals (one of which is labelled as being a male), applies to the rufous-brown phase of dress; for he says, "Supra rufo-brunneus." W e might infer, therefore, that the bright rufous dress belongs here again to the female ; but controverting this conclusion is a Bornean example in bright rufous plumage, collected by Mr. Everett (mus. nostr.), on the label of which the sex is marked male. Of ten examples of the large B. auritus, ex Malacca (mus. nostr.), five are in a rufous-coloured dress, and the other five are strongly tinged with grey above and below. I cannot discover that the sexes corresponding to these two phases of plumage have ever been determined by collectors; but Mr. Gould (I.e.) conjectured, some thirty-four years ago, that the rufous bird was the male, and the greyer bird was either the female or the young-a conjecture requiring confirmatory proof. With the exception of the male symbol on Mr. Everett's Bornean rufous example of B. stellatus, the little reliable evidence on record favours Professor Schlegel's generalization. It must not be omitted to notice that Mr. Hume (Str. F. ii. p. 349) has distinctly stated that " Mr. Hodgson's bird " (the type of Otothrix hodgsoni) " was certainly an adult female, by dissection ;" but we are left without any evidence (besides Mr. Hume's statement) that this assertion is well founded; there is nothing on the label of the type specimen relating to the sex. Judging from the following more recent observation of Mr. Hume (op. cit. iv. p. 3 7 8 ) - " It is true that when I formerly wrote, I thought it (relying on what Hodgson recorded) probable that hodgsoni was the female, and castaneus the male," - it would appear that Mr. Hodgson had recorded that he had ascertained by dissection that |