OWES OF tik NEARCTIC REGION. 
By C. WILLIAM BEEBE, 
CURATOR OF BIRDS. 
PART I.—General Account. 
Introduction. Adaptations of Plumage and Body. 
Owls and Mankind. Adaptations of Sense Organs. 
Parallels and Relationships. Adaptations of Feet. 
PART I1.—Special Account. 
PART I.—GENERAL ACCOUNT. 
INTRODUCTION. 
“Est illis Strigibus nomen; sed nominis hujus 
Causa quod horrenda stridere nocte solent.” 
Ovid, Fasti, vi, 139. 
F WE may judge of the rapidity with which mankind is taking 
possession of the earth, or, to speak from the point of view of 
the wild creatures, is usurping every habitable portion, it seems 
safe to say that evolution on any extensive scale is at an end 
among the larger forms of wild life. To read aright the story 
of the evolution of past ages, we must decipher the palimpsest 
which the creatures themselves offer,—their fossil remains, devel- 
opment, structure, appearance, distribution and habits. When all 
these are considered both separately and together, we gain the 
imperfect glimpse into the past, which is all that we can hope. 
Hence the value of even a fragmentary résumé of the known 
ecology of an individual or group of organisms. 
As is the case with so many groups of birds, we know almost 
nothing of the ancestry of owls from paleontological evidence. 
In deposits of the Eocene Age in the Lower Tertiary in Wyoming, 
a species of Bubo has been described by Marsh.* Earlier evi- 
dence of the existence of owls upon the earth, is as yet lacking. 
*Bubo leptosteus Marsh, Am. Jour. Sci., II, 1871, 126. 
