cooper’s hawk. 
£> 
necessity of employing numerous subdivisions, not only 
111 this, but also in its allied genus Strix. These, however, 
" e cannot agree to admit as genera, preferring to call 
them subgenera, and giving them a name, but when 
having occasion to mention a species belonging to any 
of them, to employ the name of the great genus. 
The desire of avoiding too great a multiplication of 
groups, has caused some, even of the first ornithologists 
°f our time, to employ sections that are not natural, 
an d with false or inapplicable characters, and, as if they 
would compel nature to conform to their preconceived 
and narrow views, after having assigned decided limits 
to their groups, to force into them species not only 
widely different, but that do not even possess the 
artificial character proposed. We shall not imitate this 
’•■rational example. It shall rather be our object to 
compose natural groups, and, in obedience to this 
Principle, whenever we meet with a group, or even a 
su *gle species, clearly insulated, it shall at least be 
pointed out, not so much regarding the number of our 
subgenera, as the characters that unite the species of 
which they are respectively composed. 
It is objected to the numerous subdivisions that have 
ieen proposed in our day, that they pass into and blend 
insensibly with each other. This is no doubt true ; 
J ut is it not the same with regard to natural groups of 
every denomination? It is this fact which has induced 
us to consider them as subgenera, and not as distinct 
geneia. We are told, however, by the advocates for 
numerous genera, that, in giving a name, we adopt a 
inis, but we do not see that this necessarily follows, 
r uere are, we confess, other grounds on which we 
ue attacked with more advantage. We may, 
P’.rnaps, be charged with inconsistency in refusing to 
aiinit., as the foundation of generic groups in the 
Kapaces, characters which are allowed, not only by 
ourselves, hut by some of those who are most strenuously 
opposed to the multiplication of genera, to have quite 
sununent importance for such distinction in other 
•■‘mihes. With what propriety, it might be asked, can 
