672 OWL 
done by Willughby, into two sections—one in which all the species 
exhibit tufts of feathers on the head, the so-called “ears” or 
“horns,” and the second in which the head is not tufted. The 
artificial and therefore untrustworthy nature of this distinction was 
shewn by Isidore Geoffroy-St. Hilaire (Ann. Sc. Nat. xxi. pp. 194- 
203) in 1830; but he did not do much good in the arrangement of the 
Owls which he then proposed ; and it was hardly until the publica- 
tion, ten years later, of Nitzsch’s Pterylographie that rational grounds 
on which to base a division of the Owls were adduced. It then 
became manifest that two very distinct types of pterylosis existed 
in the group, and further it appeared that certain differences, 
already partly shewn by Berthold (Beir. Anat. pp. 166, 167), of 
sternal structure coincided with the pterylological distinctions. By 
degrees other significant differences were pointed out, till, as summed 
up by Prof. Alphonse Milne-Edwards (Ois. foss. de la France, ii. pp. 
474-492), there could no longer be any doubt that the bird known 
in England as the Screech-Owl or Barn-Owl,! with its allies, formed 
a section which should be most justifiably separated from all the 
others of. the group then known. Space is here wanting to state 
particularly the pterylological distinctions which will be found 
described at length in Nitzsch’s classical work (Eng. trans. 
pp. 70, 71), and even the chief osteological distinctions must be 
only briefly mentioned.? These consist in the Screech-Ow] section 
wanting any manubrial process in front of the sternum, which has 
its broad keel joined to the clavicles united as a furcula, while 
posteriorly it presents an unbroken outline. In the other section, 
of which the bird known in England as the Tawny or Brown Owl 
is the type, there is a manubrial process ; the furcula, far from being 
joined to the keel of the sternum, often consists but of two stylets 
which do not even meet one another; and the posterior margin 
of the sternum presents two pairs of projections, one pair on each 
side, with corresponding fissures between them. Furthermore the 
Owls of the same section shew another peculiarity in the bone 
usually called the tarsus. This is a bony ring or loop bridging the 
channel holding the common extensor tendon of the toes—which, 
as already noticed, is possessed by the OSPREY, but does not appear 
in the Secreech-Owl section any more than in the majority of birds. 
The subsequent examination by M. Milne-Edwards (Nowy. Arch. 
Mus. Mém. ser. 2; i. pp. 185-200, pls. 4, 5) of the skeleton of an 
Owl known as Phodilus (more correctly Photodilus) budius, hitherto 
attached to the Screech-Owl section, shewed that, though in most of 
its osteological characters it must be referred to the Tawny-Owl 
1 The Owl, however, which commonly breeds in barns in Sweden and perhaps 
some other parts of Europe is our Tawny Owl, Strix stridula. 
2 A few more distinctive characters are shewn by Mr. Beddard in his paper 
on the classification of this group (/bis, 1888, pp, 335-344). 
