142 
ALLEN’S naturalist’s LIBRARY. 
he world have always the same little bill, combined with a very 
long middle toe so that if the distance of the culmen from the 
anterior edge of the cere to the tip of the bill be doubled, this 
double dimension will be found to fall short of the length of 
the nuddle toe by at least one-third. This character wfll be 
found to hold good in all the Sparrow-Hawks of the world 
even the large African species, A. melanoleucus, which is as 
rufe^^ ^ Gos-Hawk, being found to offer no exception to this 
Sparrow-Hawks have almost the same cosmopolitan distri- 
bution as the Gos-Hawks, but they do not range into the Pacific 
Islands. About thirty species are known to science. 
I. THE COMMON SP.\RROW-HAWK. ACCIPITER NISUS. 
Falco nisus, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 130 (1766) 
Aedpikr nisus, Newt. ed. Yarn Brit. B. i. p, 88 (1871)- Sharne 
and Dresser, B. Eur. v. p. 595, pis. 35i;-3c;8 Vi87ii ■ 
Sharpe, Cat Bf - Mus. i. p. 132 fi874/f Seebohm,’ bV 
ford Col. Fig Brit. B. parts iv. v. (1887)! Saunders, Man. 
Br. B. p. 323 (1889). 
Adult Male.-General colour above bluish slate-colour; wines 
like the back, the primaries browner and barred with darker 
brown more distinct below, where the inner webs of the quills 
are ashy-white, slightly tinged with rufous; tail bluish slate- 
coloui; a little browner than the back, slightly tipped with 
whitish, and crossed with four bars of darker brown • nane 
slightly mottled with white ; forehead and eyebrow somewhat 
washed with rufous; lores whitish; cheeks and ear-coverts 
bright rufous, the upper margin of the latter slaty-blue like the 
sides of the neck ; throat whitish, washed with rufous • re 
mamder of under surface white, the breast narrowly barred across 
with bright rufous, some of the bars being tinged with browm 
and becoming narrower towards the abdomen and thighs which 
are almost entirely white, like the under tail-coverts;’ flanS 
bright rufous; under w.ng-coverts and axillaries white, the 
former spotted, the latter barred with brown ; cere yellow ; bill 
dark horn-blue, yellowish at the base of the lower mandible • 
feet yellow; iris orange. Total length, 13 inches ; culmen; 
0-85; wing, 8-15; tail, 6-3; tarsus, 2'3. 
