THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY, 



[SECOND SERIES.] 

 No. n. MAY 1854. 



XXX. — A Synopsis of the Fissirostral family Bucconidse. 

 By Philip Lutley Sclater, M.A., F.Z.S. 



Though Brisson (to whose exact descriptions the greater part of 

 the species of birds contained in the last edition of the ' Systema 

 Naturae ' are referred) gives several members of his genus Bucco, 

 Linnaeus adopted but one of them, founded on the bird deno- 

 minated ^ Bucco' par eocceltence by the former author, and to 

 which the latter added the erroneous specific term capensis. 

 This Bucco capensis therefore — however far in accordance with 

 the views of modern system atists we subdivide the family to 

 which it belongs — in whatever way we arrange the birds with 

 which others have associated it — must always be retained as 

 the type species of the Linnsean genus Bucco. 



Gmelin and Latham made large additions to Linnseus's solitary 

 species, uniting, as Brisson did before them, in their genus Bucco 

 members of two very different families — that is, of the present 

 fissirostral true Bucconidce, and of the scansorial family Capi- 

 tonida, between which and the Bucconidce there has been con- 

 tinual confusion even up to the present day. 



Cuvier in his ^Tableau Elementaire d^Histoire Naturelle' 

 (1798-99), was the first to recognise the necessity of a sepa- 

 ration between the Barbus of the old world and those of the 

 new. For the former scansorial group he suggested the restriction 

 of the French term Barbu, and proposed the name Tamatia for 

 the new world B. capensis and its allies. Here we have the first 

 traces of the heresy afterwards so widely spread, of using the 

 Linnsean title Bucco for a group of birds with which Linnaeus 

 himself was perfectly unacquainted. 



In 1806 Le Vaillant published the second volume of his mag- 

 nificent work the ^ Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux de Paradis,' 

 which contains a monograph of the Barbus. These he divides 

 into three sections : — 



Ann. ^ Mat/. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol. xiii. 23 



