vm INTRODUCTION. 



however, made no attempt to group together the species of his sub- 

 division, and it is to Swainson — vpho in the ' Zoological Journal' 

 for 1827 had proposed the generic term Aglaia {ayXdia, splendor) 

 for the same group — that vre are indebted for first uniting some of 

 the scattered species of this genus under one head. Swainson, in the 

 second volume of his ' Classification of Birds,' gives eight examples 

 of Aglaia, all of which are still recognized as proper members of 

 this group of Tanagers. Mr. G. R. Gray, in the first edition of 

 his 'List of Genera of Birds,' published in 1840, created a third 

 name for the same genus, Calospiza (koXos, pulcher, et (nri^a,frin- 

 gilla), considering Calliste too much like Callista (used by Poll, an 

 Italian writer, in 1791, for a genus of Mollusea), and rejecting 

 Aglaia as having been otherwise employed by Eschscholtz in 1825. 

 In his great work on the genera of -birds, however, Mr. Gray uses 

 Calliste as the name of this group, and gives an excellent list of 

 species — no less than thirty — nearly the whole of which truly belong 

 to this form. 



In the years 1849 and 1850, being attracted by the beauty of these 

 birds, I began to pay particular attention to them, and after de- 

 scribing several, which I thought then unnoticed, in Sir William 

 Jardine's 'Contributions to Ornithology,' I wrote, in 1851, in the 

 second part of the same work, published in the month of April, a 

 full synopsis of the genus, giving specific characters and other par- 

 ticulars as far as I was then acquainted with them. Curiously 

 enough the same group was about this time the subject of the labours 

 of two other Naturalists of different nations. Dr. Cabanis, of Berlin, 

 had a few months previously printed the first sheets of his list of 

 Herr Heine's ornithological collection, called ' Museum Heineanum,' 

 which contains the Tanagers ; and Prince Bonaparte's excellent 

 article entitled, 'Note sur les Tangaras,' appeared in the 'Revue 

 et Magasin de Zoologie' for the months of April and May, 1851. 

 The same species consequently received in some instances names from 

 three different writers, and it becomes a diflScult question to deter- 

 mine the exact priority of each designation. To this, however, I be- 

 lieve Dr. Cabanis' names are strictly entitled, as I am informed that 

 the sheets of his work containing the Tanagers — though not in Eng- 

 land — were in circulation in Germany in the latter part of the year 

 1850, and I have consequently given his terms the preference. Since 



