Sclater and Salving's “Nomenclator Avium Neotropicalium”

Abstract

THE naturalists whose names are attached to the present work have been for some years working together on American ornithology. Besides numerous papers and articles of greater or less importance published in the “Ibis,”the “Proceedings of the Zoological Society,”and elsewhere, they completed in 1869 a quarto volume of “Exotic Ornithology,”containing one hundred coloured lithographic plates representing new or rare birds of South and Central America, with accompanying letterpress. These works are understood to be all written with a view to the ultimate incorporation of the results arrived at in an “Index Avium Americanarum,” or complete treatise on the ornithology of Central and South America. In further progress towards this end the authors now give us a “Nomenclator” or list of the generic and specific names of the species of birds as yet ascertained by them to occur in these countries, which form the “neotropical region” of Mr. Sclater—one of the six principal regions into which he has proposed to divide the earth's surface zoologically. After the name of each species is added the “patria” or “habitat,” indicating the exact locality in which the species has been observed.