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as Galhula ruficauda, that name having been previously appropriated by Cuvier to another 

 species. About 1850 Dr. Cabanis at Berlin, and I at Oxford, were both at work on a revision 

 of the species of Jacamars, and came alike to the conclusion that the Brazilian bird had been 

 wrongly determined and required a new name. Dr. Cabanis, in his article on the Jacamars 

 published in Ersch and Gruber's ' Encyclopadie der Wissenschaft und Kunst' in 1851, proposed 

 that this name should be " rufo-viridis" whilst I, in my revision of the same group issued in 

 Jardine's ' Contributions to Ornithology ' in the succeeding year, suggested for it the term 

 '■'■ maculicauda." Dr. Cabanis's name having precedence, has been now generally adopted as the 

 proper designation of this Jacamar. 



Galhula rufo-viridis, as it must therefore be called, is the sole representative of its genus 

 in South-eastern Brazil, but is distiibuted over a much larger area than the wood-region of 

 Brazil commonly understood by that term, extending nearly up to the Amazons on the north and 

 into Eastern Bolivia in the interior. As I have already stated, its original discoverer was Prince 

 Maximilian of Neuwied, who found it common in the forests of South-eastern Brazil, along the 

 banks of the clear dark-brown rivulets, sitting on the branches over the water and engaged in 

 capturing insects. Prince Maximilian comments on its resemblance in some respects to the 

 Humming-birds, and informs us that the Botocudo savages call it " Merohiiung-gipaJciu," or the 

 Great Humming-bird, and the Portuguese " Beja-flor'' Its food he considers to be entirely 

 insects, the remains of which he found in the stomachs of the specimens which he dissected. 

 Burmeister, who wrote of the animals of the same district at a later period, does not seem to 

 have been so well acquainted with this Jacamar as Prince Maximilian; for he describes it, 

 apparently, under two different names. He gives us, however, the useful information that its 

 stomach is exactly like that of Monasa, and contains insects. " The cseca are shorter, but much 

 clubbed; the tongue is about half the length of the bill, small, pointed, smooth, and divided 

 posteriorly into two indented flaps." 



The distinguished naturalist Natterer collected a series of twenty-five examples of this 

 Jacamar at various localities during his journey through the interior of Brazil. Herr v. Pelzeln, 

 in his excellent ' Ornithologie Brasiliens,' has given us an exact list of these localities, which it is 

 not necessary to repeat at full length. It is sufficient to say that Natterer met with this species 

 at various spots in the provinces of Eio, Sao Paulo, Goyaz, and Matto Grosso, and along the 

 Bolivian frontier as far north as Salto Theotonio on the Madeira. That it extends beyond that 

 frontier into the eastern parts of the adjacent Eepublic we know from its having been procured 

 in the Bolivian province of Chiquitos by d'Orbigny, whose specimens of this species in the Paris 

 Museum are marked ^'■Galhula macroura." I have likewise two skins of this species which, 

 although purchased of a dealer, are, I have no doubt, of Bolivian origin. 



At the northern extremity of its range Galbula rufo-viridis approaches the Amazons, if it 

 does not really occur on the banks of that mighty river. Mr. Wallace met with this species on 

 the Rio Tocantins south of Para; and Mr. Bates, writing of his journey up the same river, tells 

 us (Naturalist on the Amazons, vol. i. p. 138) "one species of Jacamar was not uncommon here 

 ( Galhula viridis) ; I sometimes saw two or three together seated on a slender branch, silent and 

 motionless with the exception of a slight movement of the head. When an insect flew past 

 within a short distance, one of the birds would dart off, seize it, and return again to its sitting- 



