124 SHUFELDT. [Vou. III. 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
The notes offered in the present paper may fitly be consid- 
ered as supplementary to my more extended memoir upon the 
Osteology of Speotyto, already alluded to above. I look forward 
with pleasure to some day devoting considerable attention to the 
American Raptorial Birds as a group, and from what I have 
thus far seen of them I have every reason to believe that they 
will afford characters of more than usual interest; the Owls, in 
particular, are, in many instances, very dissimilar in their skel- 
etons and probably so in other systems of their economy. Ana- 
tomically, too, the Hawks, Falcons, and Eagles offer much that 
requires thorough investigation, and for this work, the writer is 
continually employed in bringing together his material. 
My researches upon the anatomy of Sfeotyzo, as here set forth, 
most conclusively go to show that our American species of Owls 
—and there are a number of them — require far more extended 
investigations of their pterylography than they have received up 
to the present time. Speotyto offers, as I have shown, peculiar- 
ities in this regard, not observed by that great investigator of 
this subject, Nitzsch, and what I have here described, surely 
needs comparison with a number of our S¢vzg@, and I dare say 
with forms from the avifaunze of other countries where Owls 
occur. 
Another matter which needs attention, is to ascertain which 
of our Owls possess a vomer, and which do not; it would seem 
that this bone of the cranium never ossifies in this Prairie Owl ; 
another interesting fact. 
Further comparison is needed of the patagial group of muscles 
in these birds ; indeed, it would repay the labor to make quite 
an exhaustive study of this for the diurnal and nocturnal Rap- 
tores, to include the Cathartide. Speotyto,as I have shown, has 
peculiarities in this direction also. 
Again, the arrangement of the plantar tendons sadly needs 
looking into, and thorough comparisons made in the groups to 
which I have just referred. What has been brought out in the 
present paper, goes to prove that our subject here also affords 
structures at variance with the known arrangement of the same 
parts in certain diurnal birds of prey. 
And so on through the remainder of the economy of Speotyto, 
