2 ME. W. P. PTCEAFT ON THE 



harmless birds at the hands of ignorant and thoughtless people, it is with the greatest 

 reluctance that I make this request ; jet in the interest of Science, I feel justified 

 in doing so. Those who may feel as much reluctance in helping to furnish these 

 desiderata as I feel in making the request therefoi-, will, I hope, find consolation in the 

 reflection that my demands entail upon the species mentioned a tax which must be 

 quite impercej)tible. Say thirty young, all told, drawn from an area probably of 

 hundreds of miles, and spread over a j)eriod of several years perhaps, can certainly not 

 seriously injure the sj)ecies called upon to furnish these victims ! Of course, it would be 

 well, if possible, to procure nestlings of various ages of at least one species in every 

 genus, or at any rate of all the more important genera; The skulls of the nestling 

 Nyctala and Fhotodilus, for example, would be extremely valuable. 



For the only skeleton of Photodilus which the Museum yet possesses we are indebted 

 to Dr. Chaiies Hose, resident magistrate of Borneo. It has only recently come to 

 hand, so recently that at the moment of writing this, the skull only has been 

 prepared ; the rest of the body awaits dissection before the skeleton of the trunk can be 

 set up. 



The nestling skeletons of Syrnium we owe to Mr. W. Storrs Fox, who spared himself 

 no pains to procure the young at the ages I requested. The nestling skeletons of Scops 

 and Speotyto have been prepared from downy young sent me by my late and ever 

 lamented friend, Daniel Meinertzhagen, who looked forward with keen delight to the 

 prospect of making drawings of the skeletons thereof for me when tbis should be written. 

 1 regret, as we all must, that he was not spared to fulfil his hopes, for his loss to the 

 ranks of Ornithology is very great. 



II. The Skull of the Adult. 



The skull of the Striges is desmognathous and holorhinal, and bears a strong superficial 

 resemblance to that of the Falconiformes, as well as a general likeness to the skulls of 

 the Caprimulgi. 



It may be distinguished, however, from both Falconiform and Caprimulgine skviHs by 

 the extreme shortness of the parasphenoidal rostrum, the thick spongy lachrymal, which 

 lacks a supraorbital process, the large and functional basipterygoid processes (not 

 universal in the Falconiformes or Caprimulgi), and by the fact that the palatines are 

 separated one from another posteriorly by the vomer. Other distinctive characters will 

 be enumerated as they arise in the course of the following remarks. 



The Occqrital Region. — The occipital condyle is sessile, and the plane of the occipital 

 foramen looks directly downwards, forming only a very oblique angle with the basi- 

 cranial axis. The supra-foraminal border is extremely thin, and passes on either side into 

 a swollen ridge doing duty for the base of a paroccipital process. A barely perceptible 

 cerebellar prominence forms a broad occipital crest passing upwards into the lamhdoldal 

 ridge which, in the Bubonince, may almost be said to terminate at the apex of the 

 temporal fossa. In some species of Bubo (e. g. B. magellanica) the crest is folded back 

 upon itself into a narrow loop, the lower limb of which may be traced outwards and 



