PTEROGLOSSUS BEAUHARNAISL Wael.

Curl-crested Aracari.

Specrric CHaracteEr.

Pter. plumis capitis, genarun, nucheque foliiferis, ellius crispis nigris, harum spatulatis,

genarum stramineis nigro apiculatis.
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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

hecome 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.

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Total length, 18 inches; S2l/, 4; wing, 5%; tazl, 7+; tarsi, 24.

Pteroglossus Beauharnaiszz, Wagl. in Unterh. “das Ausland,” 1830, no. 118. S. 470.—Ib.
Olen Isis, 1832, S. 280.—Gould, Mon. of Ramph., Sturm’s Edit. pl. —Gray and
Mitch. Gen. of Birds, vol. i. p. 404, Pteroglossus, sp. 16.—Bonap. Consp. Gen. Ay.,
p- 95, Pteroglossus, sp. 16.

Peppign, Wagl. Oken’s Isis, 1832, 8. 1230.—Gray and Mitch. Gen. of Birds,
vol. it. p- 404, Pteroglossus, sp. 17.
lepidocephalus, Nitzsch.

———— ulocomus, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., Part I. p. 38.—Ib. Mon. of Ramph.,

ple is.

Beauharnasius ulocomus, Bonap. in litt.

 

Tus may be considered not only the finest of the Perog/ossz, but the most beautiful of the Ramphastide ;
it is moreover rendered conspicuously remarkable by the singular structure of the glossy and ae
1 row ‘hich we ty SI justice to; they can only be
curled appendages clothing the crown, which we find it impossible e do j ; y ca y
compared to the horn-like feathers decorating some species of the Galline,—the extreme ends of the neck-
Cc 5
and wing-feathers of the Gallus Sonnerati for instance. This structure appears to consist of a dilatation of
S .
rt re rhaps agelutination as it were of the webs into one mass.
the shaft of each feather, or perhaps an agglutination as 1t were a me i
ing F rere 4 2S is bird were transinitted to Europe, some
In 1830, and the three following years, several examples of this birc were t itted pe,
of which found a resting-place in England, and others on the continent, principally in Germany. Almost
imultaneously, the bird from its great beauty and interest attracted the notice of various ornithologists,
ae a an i Taoler calling it P. Beauharnaisi, Nitzsch P. lepi-
and several specific appellations were assigned to it, Wagler calling it P. : . ley

docephalus, and myself, unaware of either of those names having been given, proposing that of wocomus :
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