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previous year. As is there stated, there are good reasons for supposing that Prince Bonaparte's 

 term " gigas " had been already bestowed upon an individual of this same species brought from 

 Nicaragua by Delattre. But as no description of Bonaparte's " Tamatia gigas " had been pub- 

 lished, and as the type had disappeared, it v^as not advisable to adopt his name, and I conse- 

 quently employed for the species the MS. term " dysoni" which Mr. G. R. Gray had attached to 

 a specimen in the British Museum. The late Mr. David Dyson, in whose honour the name was 

 given, was a collector who proceeded to British Honduras in 1845, principally, I believe, with 

 the object of procuring living examples of the Ocellated Turkey for the celebrated menagerie of 

 the then Earl of Derby. There are many of his specimens in the British Museum and in the 

 Derby Museum at Liverpool. 



In 1860, in one of my papers upon Mr. Eraser's collection from Western Ecuador, I con- 

 stituted the form of this bird which occurs in that district as a different species under the name 

 Bucco leucocrissus. I was not aware at that time of the close relationship of the avifauna of the 

 littoral of Western Ecuador to that of Central America, nor of the fact that many species extend 

 from the Gulf of Guayaquil along the western coast far northward into the Central- American 

 isthmus. 



In 1862, in a footnote to my ' Catalogue of American Birds,' I further separated the form 

 of this Puff-bird which occurs in Eastern Ecuador, as Bucco napensis, founding this species on 

 examples in my own possession received through Mr. Gould from the river Napo, which in my 

 article on that collection, published in 1854, I had not distinguished from Bucco macrorhynchus. 



When Mr. Salvin and I were preparing our article upon M'Leannan's Panama collection, 

 Ave had occasion to determine to which of the three above-mentioned forms the bird that occurs 

 on the isthmus should be referred. We came to the conclusion that it could not be distin- 

 guished from the typical B. dysoni of Honduras and Guatemala, and that B. leucocrissus of 

 Western Ecuador could hardly be kept separate. Having now the series of fourteen specimens 

 before me, and having recently examined many others, I am quite disposed to back this opinion. 



The exact amount of white on the forehead, and the breadth of the black band below, are 

 both variable features in examples from the same district, although, as a general rule, the white 

 front is narrower and the black breast-band is broader in northern examples. On the whole, 

 however, I am convinced that the only satisfactory mode of dealing with the question is to refer 

 all the forms to one species, for which the name Bucco dysoni, as first in point of date, should 

 be adopted. 



The occurrence of Bucco dysoni on the south bank of the Amazons, above Barra, as noted 

 in my remarks on the preceding species, is certainly rather singular. Unfortunately I have no 

 longer access to the specimen upon which the observation was made ; but I do not think that 

 there was any mistake in the matter. 



My friends Godman and Salvin tell me that, during their expedition to Guatemala in 1862, 

 they met M'ith Bucco dysoni in the forests near Escuintla, a village situated on the Pacific slope 

 at an altitude of about 2000 feet above the sea-level. The bird was usually observed solitary or 

 in pairs perched on withered branches at the summit of the highest trees, and almost out of 

 gunshot. On being fired at unsuccessfully it would merely turn its head slightly and resume its 

 former position ; so that several successive shots were sometimes fired before it was disturbed 



