100 Prof. Newton on tlie Assignation 



are so few that they may be safely aud wisely discarded for 

 the sake of uniformity and consistency. It is possible that 

 there may be some three or four more Linnsean genera (but 

 certainly not half a dozen) in which, by the application of 

 this principle, the true type is discoverable ; but even these, 

 supposing them all to go against the generally accepted view 

 (and it is, of course, by no means certain that they would), 

 could not disturb more than a very small number of genera 

 and ought not to flutter the most conservative of ornitho- 

 logists, while only by those (if unhappily there are such) 

 who have sinned against light and knowledge should the 

 principle be regarded with disfavour. 



I now return to the genus Strix, which is the cause of these 

 tedious remarks, and first have to deal wdth Mr. Salvin^s note 

 (Ibis, 1875, pp. 66, 67) . According to him I " truly '' said 

 " that Strix aluco is Brisson^s type of the Linnsean genus 

 Strix as restricted.^' Now, unfortunately, I did not say this 

 truly ; and herein lies the error I have to acknowledge. I 

 shall urge little or nothing in extenuation of my crime. 

 It would only protract the present paper to show how many 

 others, from Savigny to my critics, have fallen into it ; but 

 error it undoubtedly is, as I hope to prove without fear of 

 contradiction. 



The type assigned by Brisson (Orn. i. p. 500) to his genus 

 Strix (which is, saving the species removed to form his genus 

 Asio, also that of Linnseus) is le Chat-huant. On that point 

 all will agree ; and all will also agree that his Chat-huant, or 

 type of Strix, is, as Brisson's excellent description shows, the 

 bird which we in England know as the Brown or Tawny Owl, 

 the species which has been frequently called Syrnium aluco, 

 and repeatedly figured under that name or some admitted 

 equivalent of it. But this species was not only described by 

 Brisson. He also gave a long list of references to other authors 

 whom he, rightly or Avrongly, believed to have mentioned the 

 same bird. The only one of these with which we need now 

 trouble ourselves is the first, from the ' Fauna Suecica' (p. 18) 

 — the edition of 1746 of course. Brisson correctly quotes Lin- 

 nseus's short diagnosis of the latter's " No. 55,'' with a refer- 



