68 Mr. Vigors's Sketches in Ornithology. 



of nature ! We must remaia content with the little that we already 

 know : we must close the volume at the page where our indolence 

 hints to us that we have read enough, and exactly at that page 

 where the true interest of the subject matter begins to unfold it- 

 self. We must admit no novelty that requires to be named ; no- 

 thing from those untrodden and boundless regions whence the 

 inquiring mind already thirsts in imagination for new springs of 

 knowledge — from the heart of Africa — from the hitherto inacces- 

 sible empires of the East — from the exhaustless recesses of Aus- 

 tralasia and the New World ; nothing of all the " countless my- 

 riads" of extinct forms that lie still nncharacterized in the bosom of 

 the earth, or of the living forms that waif for time to bring them to 

 light from the depths of the ocean. All these must be hid for ever 

 from the eye of science, because the knowledge of each would 

 necessarily bring with it the imposition of a name. But the force 

 of such objections is dying away daily. In declaring my own in- 

 tention that whenever I find a new form I shall unhesitatingly 

 characterize it with a new name, I apprehend that I utter but the 

 feeble echo of the voice in which every superiour naturalist speaks 

 ■who trusts to nature alone as a guide to his investigations : and 

 that I pursue a plan which has not only been followed with 

 success by the greater part of the most enlightened foreign 

 naturalists, but which has been almost universally adopted in this 

 country in every branch of Natural History, with the exception, — 

 and why there should be that exception I know not, — of the 

 hitherto circumscribed department of Ornithology. 



A small and beautiful Hawk, which has been kindly submitted 

 to my inspection by Mr. Swainson, one of the fruits of that gentle- 

 man's extensive researches in Brazil, affords me an opportunity 

 of putting my resolution into practice. This bird decidedly be- 

 longs to the Accipitrine subfamily of the Falconidce; but it is 

 placed at that remote extremity of it, where the species, gradually 

 approaching the Falcons, partially assume some of their leading 

 characters. It possesses the bill of the Hawks, and also the 

 shortness of wing which so strongly characterizes them : but the 

 structure of the wing itself is the same as in Falco, the second 

 quill feather being the longest, and the first and second of these 



