BIOLOGIA CENTRALI-AMERICANA. 
ZOOLOGIA. 
Class AVES. 
Subclass AVES CARINAT &. 
Order STRIGES. 
The Striges, or Owls, form an isolated group of birds which may be readily recognized. 
Mainly, no doubt, on account of the shape of the bill and claws, the Striges have been 
associated with the Accipitres as a suborder of Raptores, and there are other characters 
to justify this arrangement. In this work we follow, to a great extent, the system 
of the ‘Nomenclator Avium Neotropicalium,’ and there the Striges stand as a separate 
order next to the Accipitres. In the internal arrangement of the order we adhere to 
the scheme prepared by Sclater and Salvin for the ‘Nomenclator,’ and published 
by the former author in ‘The Ibis’ for 1879 (p. 351). 
This order is readily divisible into two families, viz. Strigide, represented in 
America by the genus Strix, and Asionidee by the rest of the Owls. 
Fam. STRIGIDA. 
Sterni crista dilatata, furculam summam attingente; fissuris sterni posticis nullis. 
The only genus besides Striz belonging to this family is Phodilus, containing 
a single species, P. badius, found in the Eastern Himalayas, Ceylon, and thence 
eastwards to Borneo and Java. 
STRIX, 
Strix, Linnzeus, Syst. Nat. i. p. 131 (partim) ; Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. i. p. 290. 
The range of the genus Strix is nearly worldwide, and only in the colder regions of 
the north, the islands of Oceania and New Zealand and some of those of the Malay 
Archipelago, are no species of White Owls found. 
Admitting the Old-World forms S. nove-hollandie, S. tenebricosa, S. capensis, and 
BIOL. CENTR.-AMER., Aves, Vol. IIT., November 1897. 1 
