﻿326 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 



shall, nevertheless, enumerate such of the subordinate 

 forms as appear either to lead to, or represent, the other 

 genera. We make it the primary distinction of the 

 birds of this group, that two out of the three primary 

 characters, \\z. the facial disk, the operculum, and the 

 great development of the ear, should be found in all ; 

 hence we include in it the common long and short-eared 

 owls of Britain, as aberrant forms or subgenera, repre- 

 senting the rasorial or crested type of the genus. The 

 crest, or egrets, of these two birds, indeed, would place 

 them in an arbitrary system with the genuine horned 

 owls ; but as there must be a passage from one to the 

 other, we consider that the two birds in question con- 

 stitute that passage : they retain the first and strongest 

 character of their own genus, yet they are furnished 

 with egrets, in order that they may connect the oper- 

 culated with the horned division. Leaving this, we 

 have a third type in the Stria Tengmalrni of the 

 Northern Zoology, to which, in all probability, we 

 should refer the various small species of Europe (still 

 but imperfectly known under the common name of 

 S. passerina), together with those of temperate Ame- 

 rica. These latter owls are known by their small 

 size; short feet, thickly covered with feathers to the 

 root of the claws; and by the operculum being long and 

 narrow, the conch forming almost a semicircle.* This, 

 for reasons which will appear hereafter, is doubtless the 

 tenuirostral division of the present genus, and it forms 

 our subgenus Scotophilus. Hitherto we have had owls 

 only with short, and almost even, tails ; but in the 

 gigantic Stria cineriaf the tail is long, cuneated, and 

 the feathers pointed : the facial disk, as in all the pre- 



to examine the ears of preserved specimens of the foreign species in mu- 

 seums^ and, even when they are in skins, what with the carelessness of 

 the original preserver, and the shrinking of the neighbouring parts, the 

 investigation will always be imperfect, and sometimes faulty. 



* Such is the description of S. Tengmalmi by Dr. Richardson in Northern 

 Zoology, vol. ii., which we subsequently verified ; and yet we find this very 

 bird arranged by Cuvier in the same genus with the great snowy owl, wh^h 

 has hardly any disk, no operculum, and a very small conch ! 



f Northern Zoology, ii. pi. 31. 



