COOPER'S HAWK. 225 



withstanding our most sedulous endeavors, to identify it with any. It is 

 evidently a young bird, and we should not be surprised at its proving, 

 when adult, a known species, perhaps one of the numerous species 

 figured of late, and possibly Le Grand Epervier de Cayenne, of Daudin, 

 Sparvius major, Vieillot, stated to be one-third larger than the European 

 Sparrowhawk. At all events, however, it is an acquisition to the orni- 

 thology of these states ; and we have ventured to consider it as a new 

 species, and to impose on it the name of a scientific friend, William 

 Cooper, of New York, to whose sound judgment, and liberality in com- 

 municating useful advice, the naturalists of this country will unite with 

 us in bearing testimony ; and to whom only the author, on the eve of 

 his departure for Europe, would have been willing to intrust the ulti- 

 mate revision and superintendence of this work. 



The perfect accuracy with which Mr. Lawson may be said to have 

 outdone himself in the delineation of this bird, in all the details of its 

 plumage, bill, and feet, will now at least have established the species in 

 the most incontestable manner. 



Our bird agrees very well with the Falcon gentle, Falco gentilig, 

 Linn^, but as that species is referred to the young of the Goshawk, we 

 have preferred giving it a new name to reviving one that might have 

 created an erroneous supposition of identity. To the young Goshawk, 

 our Hawk is, in fact, extremely similar in color and markings, being 

 chiefly distinguished from it by the characters of their respective sec- 

 tions, having the tarsi much more slender and elongated, and the wings 

 still shorter ; the tail is also considerably more rounded. 



But it is to the sharp-shinned Hawk [Falco velox) of Wilson, the 

 Falco pensylvanicus, or Falco fuscus in its immature plumage, that our 

 Cooper's Hawk bears the most striking resemblance, and is in every 

 particular most closely allied. Even comparing feather by feather, and 

 spot by spot, they almost perfectly agree ; but the much larger size of 

 the present, it being more than twice the bulk, will always prevent their 

 being confounded even by the most superficial observer. Another good 

 mark of discrimination may be found in the comparative length of the 

 primaries ; the second in F. cooperii being subcqual to the sixth, while 

 in F. velox it is much shorter. The latter has also the fifth as long as 

 the fourth ; that, in our species, being equal to the third. The tail is 

 also much more rounded, the outer feather being nearly an inch shorter 

 than the middle one. In F. velox the tail is even, the outer feather 

 being as long, or if anything, longer than the middle. There is no 

 other North American species for which it can be mistaken. 



The bird represented in the plate, of which we have seen seven or 



eight specimens perfectly similar in size and plumage, was a male, 



killed in the latter part of September, near Bordentown, New Jersey. 



The stomach contained the remains of a Sparrow. Another that we 



Vol. n.— 15 



