PTEROGLOSSUS BEAUHARNAISI, Wagi. 
Curl-crested Ara^ari. 
Specific Character. 
Pter. plumis capitis, genarum, tmchceque foliiferis , illius crispis nigris, harurn spatulatis, 
genarum stramineis nigro apiculatis. 
Descr. —Crown of the head clothed with curled horn-like appendages of an intense and glossy 
black, which as they approach the occiput gradually lose their curled character and 
become straight, narrow and spatulate; the cheeks clothed with similar appendages, 
straight, narrow, of a more decidedly spatulate form, and of a pearly white tipped with 
black; occiput, back, and a band across the rump deep blood-red ; lower part of the back, 
wings and tail very deep green ; primaries brown ; upper tail-coverts deep green, with a 
crescent of reddish brown near the tip; all the under surface yellow, the feathers of the 
breast fringed in a crescentic form with blood-red, and the flanks largely stained with the 
same hue, traces of which also occur on the vent and under tail-coverts; culmen of 
the bill chocolate-red at the base, passing into the orange-red of the apical half; next the 
culmen a stripe of bluish green, the remainder of the upper mandible chocolate-red, with 
the exception of a line along the serratures which is white ; under mandible yellowish white, 
except at the tip which is orange; both mandibles bounded at the base with a narrow 
band of dull red ; orbits blue, passing into green behind the eye and with a narrow line of 
blood-red next the appendages of the crown; irides red; thighs olive; legs and feet green. 
Total length, 18 inches; bill, 4; wing, 5f; tail, 74; tarsi, 24. 
Pteroglossus Beauharnaisii, Wagl. in Unterh. “ das Ausland,” 1830, no. 118. S. 470.—lb. 
Oken’s Isis, 1832, S. 280.—Gould, Mon. of Ramph., Sturm’s Edit. pi. .—Gray and 
Mitch. Gen. of Birds, vol. ii. p. 404, Pteroglossus, sp. 16.—Bonap. Consp. Gen. Av., 
p. 95, Pteroglossus, sp. 16. 
- Pceppigii, Wagl. Oken’s Isis, 1832, S. 1230.—Gray and Mitch. Gen. of Birds, 
vol. ii. p. 404, Pteroglossus, sp. 17- 
- lepiclocephalus, Nitzsch. 
—- ulocomus, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., Part I. p. 38.—lb. Mon. of Ramph., 
pi. 18. 
Beauharnasius ulocomus, Bonap. in litt. 
This may be considered not only the finest of the Pteroglossi, but the most beautiful of the Ramphastidce ; 
it is moreover rendered conspicuously remarkable by the singular structure of the glossy and curiously 
curled appendages clothing the crown, which we find it impossible to do justice to; they can only be 
compared to the horn-like feathers decorating some species of the Gallmee ,—the extreme ends of the neck- 
and wing-feathers of the Gcillus Sonnerati for instance. This structure appears to consist of a dilatation of 
the shaft of each feather, or perhaps an agglutination as it were of the webs into one mass. 
In 1830, and the three following years, several examples of this bird were transmitted to Europe, some 
of which found a resting-place in England, and others on the continent, principally in Germany. Almost 
simultaneously, the bird from its great beauty and interest attracted the notice of various ornitholoo-ists 
and several specific appellations were assigned to it, Wagler calling it P. Beauharnaisii, Nitzsch P. lepi- 
docephalus, and myself, unaware of either of those names having been given, proposing that of idocomus ■ 
