PUFF-BIRD, the name first given, according to Swainson {Zool. Illustrations, ser. 1, ii., text to pl. 99), by English residents in Brazil to a group of Birds known to ornithologists as forming the testricted Family Bucconidae, but for a long time confounded, under the general name of Barbets, with the Capitonidae of modern systematists, who regard the two Families as differing very considerably from one another. Some authors have used the generic name Capito in a sense precisely opposite to that which is now usually accorded to it, and the natural result has been to produce one of the most complex of the many nomenclatural puzzles that beset Ornithology. Fortunately there is no need here to enter upon this matter, for each group has formed the subject of· an -elaborate work—the Capitonidae being treated by the Messrs Marshall, and the Bucconidae by Mr Sclater —in each of which volumes the origin of the confusion has been explained, and to either of them the more curious reader may be confidently referred. The Bucconidae are zygodactylous Birds belonging to the large heterogeneous assemblage in the present work generally looked upon as forming the “Order” Picariae (see Ornithology, vol. xviii. p. 41), and commonly considered nowadays to be most nearly allied to the Galbulidae (Jacamar. vol. xiii. p. 531), and like them confined to the Neotropical Region, in the middle parts of which, and especially in its Sub-Andean Sub-region, the Puff-birds are, as regards species, abundant; while only two seem to reach Guatemala and but one Paraguay. As with most South-American Birds, the habits and natural history of the Bucconidae have been but little studied, and of only one species, which happens to belong to a rather abnormal genus, has the nidification been described. ...