the first to formally use Pyrgilauda for a particular snowfinch species, but that was only in 1871, when he described the small snowfinch. It was widely used for the southern snowfinch species in the late 19th and early 20th century, and continues to be used by some authors today. According to Article 11.6.1. and 50.7. in the third and fourth editions of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the genus Pyrgilauda was thus validly established by Bonaparte as a possible snowfinch genus name – even though he did not intend to – because many authors after J. Verreaux used it for these birds, and not for the sparrow-larks. Bonaparte had correctly used Montifrigilla for the white-winged snowfinch – the only snowfinch known then – however, and thus Pyrgilauda had remained an unused "shell" of a taxon until someone placed a species in it. That was done by J. Verreaux, and thus many erroneously attributed authorship of the genus to him, although as per the ICZN Code Article 69.3. he technically just fixed its type species as the small snowfinch. Another error occurred in 1982, when G. N. Kasin believed Pyrgilauda had been established twice, and thought the snowfinch genus name – which he believed to have been established by Verreaux in 1870 – was the junior homonym of Bonaparte's sparrow-lark synonym. He set up Stepaniania to replace it. But with Bonaparte's name (as co-opted by Verreaux and later authors) being a valid junior subjective synonym and not preoccupied, Stepaniania itself becomes a junior objective synonym of Pyrgilauda. The name Orospiza has a similar history to Pyrgilauda. Bonaparte merely remarked it had been used by "some" (aliquī) unspecified authors, while many subsequent sources attributed it to Johann Jakob Kaup. But that is a misunderstanding, and the only technically valid (though synonymous) name for the snowfinch genus proposed by Kaup was Chionospina. Thus, in the case of Orospiza Bonaparte is again the valid author, though Thomas Horsfield and Frederic Moore were the first to set a type species. As M. nivalis was still the only known snowfinch in 1858 when they did this, Orospiza is a junior objective synonym of Montifringilla. For somewhat different reasons, Orites is a junior objective synonym of Montifringilla. First proposed for the long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus) in Moehring's Geslachten der Vogelen in 1758, that widely ignored work was suppressed as a source of taxa by the International