SHARP-SHINNED HAWK. 
69 
On the 15th of September, two young men whom I 
had despatched on a shooting expedition, met with this 
species on one of the ranges of the Alleghany. It was 
driven around in the same furious headlong manner, 
and had made a sweep at a red squirrel, which eluded 
its grasp, and itself became the victim. These are the 
only individuals of this bird I have been able to procure, 
and fortunately they were male and female. 
The female of this species was thirteen inches long, 
and twenty-live inches in extent ; the bill, black towards 
the point on both mandibles, but light blue at its base ; 
cere, a fine pea green ; sides of the mouth, the same ; 
lores, pale whitish blue, beset with h&irs ; crown and 
whole upper parts, very dark brown, every feather 
narrowly skirted with a bright rust colour,* over the 
eye a stripe of yellowish white, streaked with deep 
brown ; primaries, spotted on their inner vanes with 
black; secondaries, crossed on both vanes with three 
bars of dusky, below the coverts ; inner vanes of both 
primaries and secondaries, brownish white ; all the 
scapulars marked with large round spots of white, not 
seen unless the plumage be parted with the hand ; tail, 
long, nearly even, crossed with four bars of black and 
as many of brown ash, and tipt with white ; throat and 
whole lower parts, pale yellowish white; the former 
marked with fine long pointed spots of dark brown, the 
latter with large oblong spots of reddish brown ; femo- 
rals, thickly marked with spade-formed spots, on a 
pale rufous ground ; legs, long, and feathered a little 
below the knee, of a greenish yellow colour, most 
yellow at the joints; edges of the inside of the shins, 
below the knee, projecting like the edge of a knife, 
hard and sharp, as if intended to enable the bird to 
hold its prey with more security between them ; eye, 
brilliant yellow, sunk below a projecting cartilage. 
The male was nearly two inches shorter ; the upper 
parts, dark brown ; the feathers, skirted with pale 
reddish, the front also streaked with the same ; cere, 
greenish yellow ; lores, bluish ; bill, black, as in the 
female ; streak over the eye, lighter than in the former ; 
