MONOGRAPH 



THE GENUS CALLISTE. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The genus Tanagra, as created by Linnaeus, embraced the whole 

 of the brilUant group of American birds to which modern NaturaUsts 

 assign the rank of a subfamily at least, if not that of a family. The 

 name is a softened and more Latin-like form of the barbarous term 

 Tangara, by which Brisson, BufPon and other older writers desig- 

 nated these birds, and which appears to have been first applied to 

 the Calliste tatao, the "Tangara" pa?' emphase of the more ancient 

 authors. 



Anselm Gaetan Desmarest in his ' Histoire Naturelle des Tangaras, 

 des Manikins et des Todiers,' published at Paris in 1805, was the 

 first writer who attempted the subdivision of the Tanagers. He 

 created the very natural groups Ramphocelus and Eiiphonia, re- 

 taining the CalUstcB along with — what are in truth their nearest allies 

 — the true Tanagrce, and placing them at the head of this section. 

 The same course was pursued by Vieillot and Cuvier in 1816 and 

 1817. Both these Naturalists proposed numerous subdivisions of 

 the Tanagers, but neither of them separated the CallistcB from the 

 true Tanagers. And so the matter remained until 1826, when Boie, 

 in his ' Generalilbersicht der ornithologischen Ordnungen, Familien 

 und Gattungen,' which appeared in the 'Isis' for that year, proposed 

 separate names for both these groups, calling what are now generally 

 known as the true Tanagrce by the term Thraupis, and creating a 

 new name Calliste (icaWiarrt], pulcherfinia) for the present section, 

 of which he gives as a type Tanagra tricolor of Gmelin. Boie, 



