PROFESSOR COLLETT ON THE MORPHOLOGY OF 

 THE CRANIUM AND THE AURICULAR OPEN- 

 INGS IN THE NORTH-EUROPEAN SPECIES OF 

 THE FAMILY STRIGID.E. 



R. W. SHUFELDT, M.D. 



One of the most extensive and valuable contributions to 

 the subject of the anatomy of owls, and their classification, 

 was given to science by Prof. Robert Collett of the Zoological 

 Museum of Christiania, Norway, in 1881. This brochure was 

 read by him before the Scientific Society of that city on 

 December 9, and published in its Proceedings for the same 

 year. This memoir printed nearly forty pages octavo, and is 

 illustrated by three folding lithographic plates, giving thirty- 

 five figures of the skulls and ear-parts of various species 

 of the family considered, the whole being entitled Craniets 

 og Oreaabningemcs Bygning hos de nordeuropceiske Arter af 

 Familien Strigidce. Appearing, as it did, in the Norwegian 

 language, the usefulness of this very excellent piece of work 

 was to a great extent limited, and many comparative anato- 

 mists all over the world could not readily employ it or avail 

 themselves of its results, both of which uses it so amply 

 merited, for the very reason that it was in Norwegian, a 

 language rarely mastered by naturalists at large. With the 

 view of obviating all this, and bringing the investigations of 

 Professor Collett in the osteology and taxonomy of the Strigi- 

 dce before the English-speaking world, I have long planned to 

 have his memoir in these fields translated, but, from one cause 

 or another, the task had to be postponed. Events of a partic- 

 ularly unfortunate nature stood in my path during the entire 

 summer of 1895 and late into the following autumn, but with 

 the opening of the year 1896, circumstances became far more 

 propitious for the resumption of all my work in comparative 



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