Satyr Tragopan

In 1750 the English naturalist George Edwards included an illustration and a description of the satyr tragopan in the third volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. He used the English name "The Horned Indian Pheasant". Edwards based his hand-coloured etching on the head of the bird preserved in alcohol and a drawing of the whole bird that had both been sent to the physician Richard Mead in London. Edwards believed that the specimen had come from Bengal, but this is an error, the specimen probably came from Nepal. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he placed the satyr tragopan with the wild turkey in the genus Meleagris. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Meleagris satyra and cited Edwards' work. The satyr tragopan is now placed in the genus Tragopan that was introduced in 1829 by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.