354 Mr. P. L. Sclater on the Fissirostral family Bucconidse. 



1. Barbus proprement dits (i.e. Capitonida). 



2. Tamatias (i. e. Bucco, Linn.) 1 / » 'tj \ 



3. Barbacous (i. e. Monasa, V.) j ^ '' 



In the correctness of these divisions we see how far in advance 

 Le Vaillant was of preceding authors, and have to lament that 

 from his having used only French terms in his writings, others, 

 who merely latinized his names, have obtained the credit of being 

 the authors of many scientific discoveries which are rightly due 

 to him alone. 



Neither Illiger nor Vieillot kept clearly apart the Bucconidte 

 and Capitonida, though the latter in his 'Analyse' (1816) first 

 formed the important genera Monasa for Le Vaillant's Barbacous, 

 and Capita (with the type B. cayanensis), from which (as the 

 earliest proposed genus in the family) the Capitonidae take their 

 name. 



Temminck however employed Capita for the fissirostral Buc- 

 conidce, and Bucco for a genus of Capitonida, exactly reversing 

 the correct use of these two names. His example was followed 

 by Wagler, Swainson, and other writers. Wagler in his ' Systema 

 Avium,' 1827, gives an excellent monograph of the two genera 

 Bucco and Monasa, under the titles Capita and Lypornix. He 

 includes 14 species in these genera ; Le Vaillant in 1806 had 

 given only 7 ; we are now acquainted with more than 80, an 

 illustration of the rapid progress lately made in the extension of 

 the number of species of birds. 



To Mr. G. R. Gray is due the credit of proposing to restore to 

 the present family the Linnsean appellation Bucco ; correcting in 

 this, as in many other instances, the inaccurate practice of using 

 generic names in different senses to those originally attached to 

 them by their first founders. In his * Genera of Birds ' he makes 

 the present group the first subfamily of Alcedinidce, under the 

 title Bucconince, or Puff -birds. The scansorial Buccones of Tem- 

 minck and others he places under the term Capitonince, or Bar- 

 bets, as the first subfamily of Picidce. The only alteration I 

 venture to suggest to this arrangement is to raise both these 

 groups to the x*ank of families, retaining them respectively 

 among the Fissirostres and Scansores, in the places assigned to 

 them by Mr. Gray. The peculiar structure of the feet and 

 eccentric habits of the Puff-birds are, I think, sufficient to war- 

 rant our doing this in their case, and what we know of the mode 

 of life of the Barbets seems also to favour the idea of their being 

 constituted a distinct family of Scansores*. 



* Mr. Wallace tells me that the Capita amazoninus (?) observed by him 

 at Guia, on the Rio Negro, feeds on fruit, and seems like a little Toucan in 

 its habits. 



