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LAZULI FINCH.
FRINGILL./I AMJNEI.
Plate VI. Fig. 5.
Emberiza aficna, SAY, in Long's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, H, p.
47.
Philadelphia Museum, No. 5919.
THE genus Emberiza, though very natural, and distinguished
by well marked characters, has, notwithstanding these advantages,
been often misunderstood; and authors, without consulting the
boundaries assigned to it by themselves, have recorded a copious
list of species, whilst in nature its limits are much restricted. We
are not therefore surprised, that so acute a zoologist as Say should
have arranged his bird in that genus, particularly as it is more
closely allied to Emberiza than many of those, not only of Wilson,
but even of Linne and Latham.
This bird, which we have no hesitation in pronouncing one of
the most beautiful of its tribe, would be placed by Vieillot in his
genus Passerina, but according to my classification it belongs to
the genus Fringilla, and to that American sub-genus lately esta-
blished in my "Observations on the Nomenclature of Wilson's
Ornithology," under the name of Spiza. As a species, it is more
intimately allied to Fringilla ciris and Fringilla cyanea,* which
I stated in that paper to differ so much from their congeners, par-
ticularly in the greater curvature of the upper mandible, as to
deserve, perhaps, a separation into a small sub-genus by themselves:
* Its relation to Fringilla cyanea, considered as an Emberiza, probably induced
Say
to place it under that genus.
VOL. I.-Q