SPARROW HAWK. 347 



ferred it to a separate genus. The principal character on 

 which this distinction is founded exists in the comparatively 

 slim and elongated tarsi and toes ; but as gradations occur be- 

 tween the sharp-shinned Hawk of America, which has the 

 tarsi still more slender, and the Goshawk, I cannot see the 

 propriety of forming the group into two genera. A greater 

 difference as to size is seen between the male and the female 

 in this than in any other British bird of prey, and even be- 

 tween individuals of the same sex the differences are such that 

 many persons have supposed the Sparrow Hawk divisible into 

 several species. 



Male. — This remarkably elegant bird has the body slender, 

 the neck short, the head of moderate size, broadly ovate, and 

 rather convex above. The bill is very short, moderately stout, 

 compressed ; the upper mandible with its dorsal line decurved 

 from the base, nearly in the fourth of a circle, the sides rapidly 

 sloping and nearly flat, the edges anteriorly sharp, with a broad 

 rounded dentiform process or festoon about the middle, the tip 

 trigonal and very acute ; the cere short, and in the greater part 

 of its extent bare ; the lower mandible with the angle short, 

 broad, and rounded, the dorsal line convex, the back broad at 

 the base, the sides rounded, the edges sharp and inflected, the 

 tip obliquely truncate, with a shallow sinus, thin-edged, and 

 rounded. 



Internally the upper mandible is slightly concave, the lower 

 deeply concave, with a prominent median line. The palate is 

 flat, with two soft longitudinal, slightly papillate ridges. The 

 posterior aperture of the nares is oblong behind, linear before. 

 The tongue is half an inch long, sagittate and serrulate at the 

 base, oblong, fleshy, broadly channelled above, wuth the tip 

 rounded and emarginate. The oesophagus is four inches and a 

 half long, at the upper part half an inch wide, then dilated into a 

 crop an inch in width, after which it contracts to five twelfths. 

 The proventricular portion is eight twelfths long ; its glandules 

 cylindrical, forming a continuous belt having four slight lonoi- 

 tudinal depressions. The stomach is of a roundish form, some- 

 what compressed, an inch and a half in diameter ; its muscu- 

 lar coat very thin, the fibres arranged in fasciculi, the tendons 



