A SYNOPSIS
OF
THE EISSIROSTRAL FAMILY
BUCCO NID Æ.
Though Brisson (to whose exact descriptions the greater part of
the species of birds contained in the last edition of the f Systema
;'Nâturæ ’ are referred) gives several members of his genus Bucco,
Linnaeus adopted but one of them, founded on the bird denominated
‘ Buccoi p a r excellence by the former author, and to
which th e 'latte r added the erroneous specific term capensis.
This Bucco capensis therefore—however far in accordance with
the views of modem systematists we subdivide the family to
which it belongs—din whatever way we arrange the birds with
which" others have associated it—must always be retained as
„the type species of the^Linnaean genus BuccoV
Gmelin and Latham made large additions to Linnaeus’s solitary
species, uniting, as Brisson did before them, in their genus Bucco
members of two very different families—that is, of the present
fissirostral true Bucconidoe, and of the seansorial family Capi-
tonidee, between which and the Bucconidoe there has been continual
confusion even up to the present day.
Cuvier 'in his ‘ Tableau Elémentaire d’Histoire Naturelle f
(1798-99), was the first to recognise the necessity of a separation
between the Barbus of the old „world and those of the
new. For the former seansorial group he suggested the restriction
of the French term Barbu, and proposed the name Tamatia for
the new world B. capensis and its allies. Here we have the first
traces of the heresy afterwards so widely spread, of using the
Linnsean title Bucco for a group of birds with which Linnæus
himself was perfectly unacquainted.
In 1806 Le Vaillant published the second volume of his magnificent
work the ‘ Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux de Paradis/
which contains a monograph of the Barbus. These he divides
into three sections :—
b 2