roDD; A Revision of tin Genus Chjemepelia. 511 



is mentioned by several other early writers on the Wes1 Indies. 

 Linnaeus based his description of Columba passerina largely upon 

 Catesby, who was the firsl to give an account of the bird from eastern 

 North America. In the twelfth edition of his Systema Nature (1766) 

 Linnaeus gave a binomial name to the "Turtur parvus fuscus ameri- 

 canus" of Brisson, calling it Columba m inula. Columba talpacoti 

 was formally described by Temminck and figured by Madame Knip 

 in 1808 11, although it had been noticed by Azara a few years earlier. 

 Talpacotia rati pen 11 is was described by Bonaparte in 1S54, and in 

 1877 the last specific member of the genus to be discovered, Chamaz- 

 pelia buckleyi, was described by Messrs. Sclater and Salvin. 



Meanwhile Chaincpclia or Chamcepelia of Swainson had come to be 

 applied to the group, and as early as 1854 Bonaparte had critically 

 treated the species involved, amplifying his review the following 

 year in a paper entitled "Coup d'ceil sur l'ordre des Pigeons." Bona- 

 parte was the first author to recognize that C. passer in a was a com- 

 posite (as it was then regarded) or variable species, but unfortunately 

 he made the mistake of referring Columba m inula Linnaeus to it as a 

 synonym, while at the same time redescribing the latter under two 

 different names. For the species with partially feathered tarsi he 

 proposed the genus Talpacotia — a name which has had but little 

 currency — referring thereto T. cinnamomea, T. godina (both syn- 

 onyms of the earlier Columba talpacoti), and his new species T. rufi- 

 pennis. Thus, instead of clearing up the situation, Bonaparte con- 

 siderably increased the confusion, and, indeed, most of the errors into 

 which subsequent authors have fallen in regard to this group of birds 

 are directly due to having blindly followed Bonaparte's lead. 



Information concerning # the ranges of the various species continued 

 to accumulate, and after trinomials came into vogue several sub- 

 species of C. passerina were described, but no important critical review 

 of the genus as a whole again appeared until 1893, when Count 

 Tommaso Salvadori published his great work on the Pigeons as 

 Volume XXI of the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum. 

 The index to the literature pertaining to the Ground Doves as given 

 in this work is unusually full, but the author's conservatism in the 

 matter of trinomials led him to merge all the subspecific names thus 

 far proposed for C. passerina under one he. id. while at the same time 

 admitting the existence of geographical variation. Yet if there ever 

 was a case demanding the use of trinomials, surely it is this, and 



