76 
EVENING GROSBEAK. 
region, which are covered with a thick growth of various trees 
of the coniferous order, and only leave them in small parties at 
the approach of night. Their note is strange and peculiar, and 
it is only at twilight that they are heard crying in a singular 
strain. This mournful sound, uttered at such an unusual hour, 
strikes the traveller’s ear, but the bird itself is seldom seen; 
though, probably from its unacquaintance with man, it is so 
remarkably tame and fearless as almost to suffer itself to be 
caught with the hand. 
The specimen of the Evening Grosbeak presented to the 
Lyceum of New-York by Mr. Schoolcraft, from which Mr. 
Cooper established the species, was thought until lately the 
only one in possession of civilized man; but we have since 
examined two others shot early in the spring on the Athabasca 
Lake, near the Rocky Mountains, and preserved among the 
endless treasures of Mr. Leadbeater of London. From the 
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 specimen 
now before us, which Mr. Leadbeater with the most obliging 
liberality has confided to our charge. 
Although we consider the Grosbeaks ( Coccothraustes ) as only 
a subgenus of our great genus Fringilla, they may with equal 
propriety constitute one by themselves; as the insensible degrees 
by which intermediate species pass from one form into another, 
(which determined us in considering them as a subgenus, and not 
a genus) are equally observable between other groups, though 
admitted as genera. Coccothraustes is as much entitled to be 
distinguished generically from Fringilla, as Turdus from Sylvia; 
and at all events, its claim is full as good, and perhaps better, 
than its near relation Pyrrhula. In the present work, however, we 
have preferred retaining things as we found them, until we can 
