xxxm 



a memoir on the subject in the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History'*. In this essa.y I 

 divided the family into four genera (Bucco, Malacoptila, Monasa, and Chelidoptera), and 

 described thirty-three species as known to me. 



In the list of Puif-birds contained in his ' Conspectus Volucrum Zygodactylorum,' published 

 in the same year, Bonaparte enumerated thirty-one species under nine generic heads. Five of 

 these were new names, of which no descriptions were given, and the author still continued to 

 miscall the family " Capitonidse." 



In 1855, when describing some additional species of this group before the Zoological 

 Society of London, I took the opportunity of giving a geographical table of the species known 

 to me f. These were thirty-one in number, arranged in five genera, one being added to those 

 adopted in my ' Synopsis.' 



In the following year Herr v. Pelzeln gave an account of the species of this family met 

 with by the celebrated collector Natterer in his Brazilian travels. These were no less than 

 twenty in number, concerning each of which excellent notes on the colours of the soft parts and 

 other peculiarities recorded in Natterer's MS. journal are given. Two species were described as 

 new, but one of them had, in fact, been just previously named in another quarter. In the same 

 year (1856) Burmeister published the second volume of his ' Systematische Uebersicht der Thiere 

 Brasiliens.' Burmeister arranged the PufF-birds next to the Trogons, and included in his work 

 thirteen species (as Brazilian) divided into three genera. Some good notes on the internal 

 structure of these birds were also given. 



In the Catalogue of the American Birds in my collection, published in 1862, I gave a list of 

 my specimens of Bucconidse. At that time they were fifty-four in number, referable, according 

 to my views at that date, to thirty-nine species. 



In the succeeding year (1863) Messrs. Cabanis and Heine gave a full account of the 

 Bucconidse in the section of the ' Museum Heineauum ' devoted to the Scansores. Here the 

 family, arranged between the Cuculidae and the Trogonidse, is divided into eleven genera, 

 containing altogether fifty species. 



In his useful 'Hand-list' (1869) Gray placed the Bucconidae as a family of Fissirostres, 

 between the Trogons and Kingfishers, and gave a list of fifty-one described species, referred to 

 three genera. 



Finally, in 1870, Mr. Salvin and I catalogued the Pu9"-birds known to us in our ' Nomen- 

 clator Avium Neotropicalium.' We here recognized forty-three species, divisible into five genera. 

 To these species I added one, and to these genera two, in a paper read before the Zoological 

 Society of London in June last year, " On the Generic Divisions of the Bucconidae/' I may add 

 that the series of specimens of this group now in my collection consists of 130 individuals, 

 referable to 39 species, while that of my friends Salvin and Godmati embraces 167 individuals, 

 belonging to 38 species. Upon these two collections the present monograph has been entirely 

 based, the only deficiency in the united series being Nonnula cinemcea^ of which the unique 

 specimen is in the British Museum. 



* This memoir was shortly afterwards reprinted as a separate work, accompanied by four coloured plates, atul pul>- 

 lished by S. Highley, of Meet Street. It is quoted in the present work as ' Syn. Bucc.,' i. e. ' Synopsis of the Buccouidffi.' 

 t See P. Z. S. 1855, p. 196. 



ScL. Jac. & Tn&h.— July, 1882. ' , e 



