354 Audubon’s Ornithology, First Volume. 
uous. The different kinds of these birds are so well marked by 
the hand of nature, that the rudest and most unskilled observer 
can at once distinguish them and separate them into their three 
natural genera of owls, hawks, and vultures. Why mystify, then, 
what is in itself so simple? . What is to be gained by manufac- 
turing genera where no generic characters exist on the surface? 
Certainly nothing to simplify, nothing to benefit science. A falcon 
is still a falcon, no matter whether it have the compact form, the 
talons and beak of an eagle—whether it have a swallow-tail, a 
wing longer than tail, a collar round its neck, or whatever specific 
difference may exist. Why then, where nature has given us but 
one genus, and that one as distinctly defined as any in the ani- 
mal kingdom, create twenty others from mere specific character- 
istics? T'wenty three American hawks, and nearly half as many 
genera! And if we are to have a genus for nearly every species 
that may differ from the genus to which it naturally belongs, 
why is not the principle carried out every where? Why, for in- 
stance, if the Falco furcatus is to be separated from its kindred, 
and marked off into-a genus by itself,- because it has a swallow 
tail, why are the purple martins, the white-bellied swallow, and 
the barn swallow, with their forked tails, put in the same genus 
as the cliff swallow, with its tail perfectly square? If the night- 
hawk is to be separated from the goat sucker because it has no 
bristles at the base of its mandible, why is not the Hirundo serri- 
pennis made into a distinct genus because it has spines where no 
others of the genus Hirundo are known to have them? In short, 
we think the quinary system a very objectionable one, tending 
to perplex and mystify the science of ornithology, with no sub- 
stantial foundation—indeed with none at all, beyond the acci- 
dental whims and caprice of its founders. We regret therefore 
the necessity under which Mr. Audubon felt himself to lend to it 
the weight of his authority, by adopting it. We mean to con- 
vey no censure whatever upon him for having done so. For 
_ while we know full well there is no one more fully sensible of 
its imperfections than he, we know too that it was only because 
he would be exposed to the hasty and unjust censure of foreign 
“ eritics if he did not do so, that he submitted to the necessity of 
: — _ We all know the sneering manner in which his first 
