OWL 673 
section, in several of the particulars mentioned above it resembles 
the Screech-Owls, and therefore we are bound to deem it a con- 
necting link between them. The pterylological characters of 
Photodilus seem not to have been fully investigated,! but it is 
found on the one hand to want the singular bony tarsal loop, as 
well as the manubrial process, while on the other its clavicles are 
not united into a furcula to meet the keel, and the posterior margin 
of the sternum has processes and fissures like those of the Tawny- 
Owl section.  Photodilus having thus to be removed from the 
Screech-Owl section, Prof. Milne-Edwards has replaced it by a new 
form, Heliodilus, from Madagascar (Comptes Rendus, 1887, p. 1282), 
described at length by him in M. Grandidier’s great work on the 
natural history of that island (Ocseaua, i. pp. 113-118, pls. xxxvi. 
a-c). The unexpected results thus obtained preach caution in regard 
to the classification of other Owls, and add to the misgivings that 
every honest ornithologist must feel as to former attempts to 
methodize the whole group—misgivings that had already arisen 
from the great diversity of opinion displayed by previous classifiers, 
hardly two of whom seem able to agree. Moreover, the difficulties 
which beset the study of the Owls are not limited to their respective 
relations, but extend to their scientific terminology, which has long 
been in a state so bewildering that nothing but the strictest 
adherence to the very letter of the laws of nomenclature, which 
until lately have been approved in principle by all but an insignifi- 
cant number of zoologists, can clear up the confusion into which the 
matter has been thrown by heedless or ignorant writers—some of 
those who are in general most careful to avoid error being not wholly 
free from blame in this respect. 
A few words are therefore here needed on this most unprofitable 
subject.2, Under the generic term Sta, Linneus placed all the Owls 
known to him; but Brisson most justifiably divided that genus, and 
in so doing fixed upon Strix stridula—the aforesaid Tawny Owl—as 
- its type, while under the name of Asio he established a second 
genus, of which his contemporary’s S. ofus, presently to be men- 
tioned, is the type. Some years later Savigny, who had very 
peculiar notions on nomenclature, disregarding the act of Brisson, 
_ chose to recognize the Linnean S. flammea—the Screech-Owl before 
spoken of—as the type of the genus Striz, which genus he further 
dissevered, and his example was largely followed until Fleming gave 
to the Screech-Owl the generic name of Aluco,? by which it had been 
known for more than three hundred years, and reserved Stria for 
the Tawny Owl. He thus anticipated Nitzsch, whose editor (Bur- 
1 Mr. Beddard has noticed a few points (Zbzs, 1890, pp. 293-294). 
* It was dealt with at greater length in 7’he Ibis for 1876 (pp. 94-105). 
3 The word seems to have been the invention of Gaza, the translator of Aris- 
totle, in 1503, and is the Latinized form of the Italian Allocco, 
43 
