EVENING GROSBEAK. 
77 
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 veiy 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. 
The Evening Grosbeak is eight and a half inches long; its bill 
is of a greenish yellow, brighter on the margins, seven-eighths of 
an inch long, five-eighths broad, the same in height; the capistrum 
and lora are black: the front is widely bright yellow, prolonged 
in a broad stripe over the eye to the ears; the hind crown is black, 
intermixed with yellow, visible only on separating the feathers, 
but leading to the suspicion that at some period the yellow extends 
perhaps all over the crown: the sides and inferior parts of the 
head, the whole neck above and beneath, together with the 
interscapulars and breast, are of a dark olive brown, becoming 
lighter by degrees; the scapulars are yellow, slightly tinged with 
greenish; the back, rump, with the whole lateral and inferior 
surface, including the under wing and under tail-coverts, yellow, 
purer on the rump, and somewhat tinged with olive brown on the 
VOL. II.—u 
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