LETTER TO W. SWAINSON, ESQ. 197 



disk in owls, although the circumstance appears never 

 yet to have been touched upon." 

 I should wonder if it had. 



Supposing your theory to be true, — then, indeed, has 

 Dame Nature most cruelly punished your " type," the 

 barn-owl; for even in the month of June, she directs 

 this bird to hunt for mice ; and she shows it how to catch 

 them when the sun is blazing in a cloudless sky.* 

 This, I myself have seen repeatedly. To what intense 

 pain must this poor bird be doomed if its feathery " facial 

 disk" has the power of reflecting the burning rays of the 

 sun upon its eye ! If the " facial disk" could effect this, 

 the barn-owl would assuredly be aware of it ; and she 

 would either, in common prudence, keep her room till 

 night -fall, or borrow a parasol to protect her eyesight 

 from the flaming luminary. 



If the Dame judged it necessary to furnish your 

 "type" with this "facial disk" in order to increase its 

 power of nocturnal vision, we must lament that the 

 bittern, the heron, the wild duck, and many others have 

 been sadly neglected by her; for none of these birds 

 have that which you term facial disk, still they all search 

 for food in the darkest night, and wing their way in 

 safety through the darkest sky. 



If my humble opinion of your Natural History and 

 Classification of Birds were asked, I should answer, 

 without hesitation, that many parts of it would puzzle 

 much clearer intellects than those contained in my own 

 brain-pan ; that other parts, are vastly overstrained, and 

 that others are exceedingly erroneous. Indeed, on a 

 close inspection of it, I could fancy that the whole has 

 been compiled from books, and from dimensions taken 

 from the dried skins of birds. 



* ** Owls of this group are eminently nocturnal." — Swainson. 



