4 
COOPER’S HAWK. 
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 genera. We are told, however, by the advocates 
for numerous genera, that in giving a name we adopt a genus; 
but we do not see that this necessarily follows. 
There are, we confess, other grounds on which we might be 
attacked with more advantage. We may perhaps be charged with 
inconsistency in refusing to admit as the foundation of generic 
groups in the JRapaces, characters, which are allowed, not only by 
ourselves, but by some of those who are most strenuously opposed 
to the multiplication of genera, to have quite sufficient importance 
for such distinction in other families. With what propriety, it 
might be asked, can we admit Hydrobates ( Fuligula , Nob.) as 
distinct from Jlnas, and the various genera that have been dis¬ 
membered from Lanins, at the same time that we reject, as genera, 
the different groups of Hawks? To this we can only reply, that 
we are ourselves entirely convinced, that all the subgenera 
adopted in our Synopsis among the Falcones of North America, 
are quite as distinct from each other as Coccyzus and Cuculus, or 
Corvus and Garrulus. The latter genus we have admitted after 
Temminck, who is opposed to new genera among the Hawks; 
though Jistur and Elanus certainly require to be separated, no 
less than the two genera that Temminck himself has established 
in the old genus Vultur. 
No living naturalist, (with the exception of those, who, through 
a sort of pseudo-religious feeling, will only admit as genera, 
groups indicated as such by Linne) has adhered longer than 
ourselves, to large genera; at the same time that we could not 
deny the existence of subordinate natural groups. We will not 
pretend to deny that these are of equal rank with some recog¬ 
nized as genera in other families; and we can only say, that we 
consider it doubtful, in the present unsettled state of the science, 
