1900.] SHUFELDT—OSTEOLOGY OF THE STRIGES. 677 
All of the Owls I have ever examined possess basipterygoid 
processes, and I have often wondered what species of these birds 
Sir Richard Owen referred to when he wrote that they were absent 
in Owls (see Anat. Verts., Vol. ii., p. 49). 
On the superior aspect of the skull, such Owls as Budo are nar- 
row in the frontal region between the margins of the orbits, and 
the fronto-orbital processes are short and stumpy. 
Another thing to be noticed in these large Owls is the prominent 
manner in which the frontal region of the skull overreaches the 
naso-premaxillary region in front of it. The frontal bones really 
bulge forward here, creating a very striking feature, totally absent 
in such a species as S¢vtx fratincola, and only moderately well de- 
veloped in some other Owls. The Owl’s skull that shows it the best 
of all the specimens before me is one from Bubo maximus, a Jap- 
anese species, but it is by no means slightly marked in our own 
Lubo virginianus (see Fig. 4). 
Fic. 3. Basal view of the skull of Str¢x pratincola (No. 18196, U. S. Nat. 
Museum). Adult; life-size. 
