434 
EVENING GROSBEAK. 
more perfect of these, our plate, already engraved from Mr 
Cooper’s specimen, has been faithfully coloured ; and the sub- 
joined description is carefully drawn up from a perfect speci- 
men now before us, which Mr Leadbeater, with the most ob- 
liging liberality, has confided to our charge. 
Although we consider the grosbeaks ( Coccotliraustes) as only 
a subgenus of our great genus Fringilla^ they may with equal 
propriety constitute one by themselves ; as the insensible de- 
grees by which intermediate species pass from one form into 
another, (which determined us in considering them as a sub- 
genus, and not a genus, ) are equally observable between other 
groups, though admitted as genera. Coccotliraustes is as much 
entitled to be distinguished generically from Fringilla^ as Tur- 
dus from Sylvia ; and at all events, its claim is full as good, and 
perhaps better, than its near relation, Pyrrhula. In the pre- 
sent work, however, we have preferred retaining things as 
we found them, until we can apply ourselves to the work of a 
general reform, as announced in the first article of this volume. 
Though we regard the grosbeaks as a subgenus, others, going 
to the opposite extreme, have erected them into a separate 
family, composed of several genera. The evening grosbeak 
is, however, so precisely similar in form to the hawfinch-type 
of the group, as to defy the attempts of the most determined 
innovators to separate them. Its bill is as broad, as high, quite 
as strong and turgid, with both mandibles equal, the upper 
depressed and rounded above, and the commissure straight. It 
conforms even, in a slight degree, in the rhomboidal shape of 
the ends of the secondaries — a character so conspicuous in its 
analogue ; to which, in the distribution and transitions of its 
tints, though very different, it also bears a resemblance. It is, 
however, of the four North American species of its group, the 
only one so strictly allied, for even the cardinal grosbeak, the 
most nearly related of these species, on account of its short 
rounded wings and other minor traits, might be separated, 
though fortunately it has not as yet, to our knowledge ; the 
others have been already. 
