224 ME. W. P. PYCEAPT ON THE 



Ri'st of all my tlianks are due to Prof. Newton, who started tlie work, provided me 

 with a valuable collection of skeletons, and furnished me with an unlooked-for chance 

 of examining the pterylosis of Sceloglaux. Moreover, he has helped me throughout the 

 preparation of this essay by kindly sympathy and advice. 



To Dr. Sclater and Mr Beddard I owe much ; they have furnished me with valuable 

 material from the Zoological Gardens, amongst which I would mention Bnho lacteus, 

 B. mrgiiiianus, B. tovqnatus, Speotyto, and the only Barn Owl I have been able to 

 examine. 



Mr. Jesse, of La Martinifere College, Lucknow, sent me some beautifully preserved 

 embryos o^ Athene hrama and other material. Mr. Allan Wilson, of Wadham College, 

 Oxford, procured me the Tawny Owl from which the description which follows was taken, 

 and since then I have had one other from the Zoological Gardens. 



Lastly I have to record the share contributed to this paper by one who has since 

 passed away. I allude to the death of one of my kindest and best of friends, Mr. Daniel 

 ^leinertzhagen. His loss Avill be keenly felt, not only by those to whom he had endeared 

 himself in a thousand different ways, but by ornithologists at large. Young, enthusiastic, 

 an exquisite draughtsman, a most careful worker, and imbued with a deep love of 

 Ornithology, he seemed in every way one from whom we might expect great things, 

 and had he lived we should not have been disappointed. He took the keenest interest 

 in the progress of this work, and furnished me with most of the forms herein described 

 from liis aviaries at Mottisfont Abbey. Amongst the rarest are the Tengmalm's Owl, 

 Ural Owl, Snowy Owl, Ninox, Hawk Owl, and Scops. To his pen we owe the very 

 beautiful and accurate figures which form the Plates illustrating this part. These were 

 drawn in Prof. Lankester's Laboratories at Oxford, where we were both working, and 

 they represent the last work he ever did before taking his farewell of the University. 



II. Historical. 



Almost all that we know concerning the pterylography of the Owls we owe to Nitzsch 

 (13). Regarding them as closely allied to the Accipitres, he yet realized that they differed 

 pterylologically from them in many important particulars, svich as the absence of an 

 altershaft to the feathers, the absence of down-feathers on the pterylae, and the nude oil- 

 gland. In their general pterylosis, as he pointed out, they bear what is certainly a 

 striking resemblance to the Falcons ; but, as will be shown later, the points which he 

 selected as distinguishing the Owls from these break down when applied to a large 

 series of examples. 



His study of the pterylography induced him to divide the Owls into two sections by 

 cutting off the Barn Owls as a gronp by themselves apart fi-om the rest. Later researches, 

 taking into account the osteology and myology of the two groups, have confirmed his 

 action. 



According to Nitzsch the pterylosis of all the Owls, save Strix, was exactly the same 

 as in Bubo (Stria; bubo, 'L., = B. ignavus, Forst., was tlie type figured), save in one or two 

 minute points, the various species being distinguished one from another by the relative 



