COOPER’S HAWK. 267 
fectly with many, we have not been able, notwithstanding our 
most sedulous endeavours, to identify it with any. It is evi- 
dently a young bird, and we should not be surprised at its 
proving, when adult, a known species, perhaps one of the nu- 
merous 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 sparrow-hawk. At all 
events, however, it is an acquisition to the ornithology 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 communicating 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 ultimate revision and superinten- 
dence of this work. 
The perfect accuracy with which Mr Lawson may be said 
to have outdone himself in the delineation of this bird, in ail 
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 gen- 
tilis, Linné; 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 supposi- 
tion of identity. To the young goshawk, our hawk is, in Zact, 
extremely similar in colour and markings, being chiefly dis- 
tinguished from it by the characters of their respective sections, 
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 Pennsylvanicus, 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 
