BIRDS 01' NORTH AND MIDDLE AMERICA. 55 



lateral claws reaching about to base of middle claw: hind claw 

 decidedly shorter than its digit. Plumage silky, blended. 

 • Coloration.— {1) Plain bluish gray, with blue or greenish wings and 

 tail; (2) purplish olive or grayish, with light-colored wing-coverts and 

 black remiges; (3) with bluish head and greenish-yellow lesser wing- 

 coverts, or (4) with blue head and yellow or orange rump and under 

 parts. 



J?ffl«,^«.— Continental tropical America, from southern Mexico to 

 Argentina and Peru. 



Notwithstanding the great difference in the form of the bill between 

 T. ornata and T. honariensis., other species are so variously intermedi- 

 ate in this respect that, taking into consideration also the fact that 

 other considerable differences between the various species (both as to 

 structure and style of coloration) are not correlated with one another, 

 I am unwilling to subdivide the genus as here defined. I must, how- 

 ever, expunge the Aglaia cyanocephala D'Orbigny and Lafresnaye, 

 usually placed in Tanagra, on account of its narrow nostrils with 

 broad superior operculum, broad and depressed bill, shorter and more 

 rounded wing, and longer tarsus.^ 



KEY TO THE SPECIES OF TANAGRA. 



a. Wings and tail blue, blue-green, or green; under parts pale gray, grayish blue, or 

 grayish green. (Southern Mexico to Venezuela, and northern Peru.) 



Tanagra cana (p. 55) 

 oa. "Wings and tail blackish, at least in part; under parts olive (sometimes glossed 

 with purplish blue). 

 h. Lores pale gray; bases of remiges light olive; adults without blue on head or 

 neck. (Costa Rica to Amazon Valley. ) 



Tanagra palmamm melanoptera (p. 58) 

 hb. Lores black; bases of remiges yellow; adults with head and neck blue. (South- 

 ern Mexico to southern Honduras. ) Tanagra abbas (p. 60) 



TANAGRA CANA Swainson. 

 BLUE TAITAGER. 



Adult male. — Head, neck, and under parts plain pale grayish blue, 

 sometimes faintly tinged with greenish; back and scapulars darker 

 grayish blue, usually more or less strongly tinged with glaucous-green, 

 the rump and upper tail-coverts similar but brighter; lesser and 

 middle wing-coverts bright campanula blue; rest of wings greenish 

 blue (intermediate between glaucous-blue and turquoise), the tertials 



^This I have made the type of a new genus, for which I inadvertently used (Auk, 

 XV, July, 1898, p. 226) Cabanis's name HemUhraupis, afterwards (Auk, xv, Oct., 

 1898, pp. 330, 331) correcting the error and renaming the genus Sporaihraupis, but 

 unfortunately committing another in giving a false derivation (at secondhand) for 

 the name. 



