GUAN, a word apparently first introduced into the ornithologist's vocabulary about 1743 by Edwards,[1] who said that a bird he figured (_Nat. Hist. Uncommon Birds_, pl. xiii.) was "so called in the West Indies," and the name has hence been generally applied to all the members of the subfamily _Penelopinae_, which are distinguished from the kindred subfamily _Cracinae_ or curassows by the broad postacetabular area of the pelvis as pointed out by Huxley (_Proc. Zool. Society_, 1868, p. 297) as well as by their maxilla being wider than it is high, with its culmen depressed, the crown feathered, and the nostrils bare--the last two characters separating the _Penelopinae_ from the _Oreophasinae_, which form the third subfamily of the _Cracidae_,[2] a family belonging to that taxonomer's division _Peristeropodes_ of the order _Gallinae_. The _Penelopinae_ have been separated into seven genera, of which _Penelope_ and _Ortalis_, containing respectively about sixteen and nineteen species, are the largest, the others numbering from one to three only. Into their minute differences it would be useless to enter: nearly all have the throat bare of feathers, and from that of many of them hangs a wattle; but one form, _Chamaepetes_, has neither of these features, and _Stegnolaema_, though wattled, has the throat clothed. With few exceptions the guans are confined to the South-American continent; one species of _Penelope_ is however found in Mexico (e.g. at Mazatlan), _Pipile cumanensis_ inhabits Trinidad as well as the mainland, while three species of _Ortalis_ occur in Mexico or Texas, and one, which is also common to Venezuela, in Tobago. Like curassows, guans are in great measure of arboreal habit. They also readily become tame, but all attempts to domesticate them in the full sense of the word have wholly failed, and the cases in which they have even been induced to breed and the young have been reared in confinement are very few. Yet it would seem that guans and curassows will interbreed with poultry (_Ibis_, 1866, p. 24; _Bull. Soc. Imp. d'Acclimatation_, 1868, p. 559; 1869, p. 357), and what is more extraordinary is that in Texas the hybrids between the chiacalacca (_Ortalis vetula_) and the domestic fowl are asserted to be far superior to ordinary game-cocks for fighting purposes. (A. N.) FOOTNOTES: [1] Edwards also gives "quan" as an alternative spelling, and this may be nearer the original form, since we find Dampier in 1676 writing (Voy. ii. pt. 2, p. 66) of what was doubtless an allied if not the same bird as the "quam." The species represented by Edwards does not seem to have been identified.