MONOGRAPH OF THE OWLS— STRIGID, 
the representants of the true bird type, because they represent the 
whole class in their suborder. 
Their present place as a family, at the end of all the Rapaces, 
is one which it is not possible to justify. The best genera of the 
Strigide are formed by Sayigny, Cuvier, Duméril, Boie, and Brehm. 
All the others, made by Wagler, Isidore Geoffroy, Ch. Bonaparte, 
Lesson, Blyth, Hodgson, want the necessary foundations. They 
are simple subgenera or nominal genera. 
With regard to the subgeneric sections, I have gone further than 
all my predecessors. I give them particular names, because they 
have characters which distinguish them as sections of a genus. 
I consider the genus Ulula, Cuv., as a nominal genus, because 
the Syrn. lapponicum and nebulosum, are not different from the 
subgenus Syrnium of the genus Syrnium, in which aluco is the 
typical species. 
In the same way I must suppress the genus Ascalaphia, because 
I could not find, after the most careful research, any generic or 
subgeneric¢ characters by which I could distinguish Bubo ascalaphus 
from B. bengalensis, maximus, virginianus, and africanus, all of 
which form my subgenus Bubo of the genus Bubo. 
The same is the case with the genus Megapelia, Ch. Bonap. I 
cannot separate the J. peld from the subgenus Aetupa, Less., and 
I mean that Bubo peli is the true typical species of the subgenus 
Ketupa and the whole genus Bubo. 
I must also give the old name Scops the preference to the new 
name Ephialtes, because I cannot admit, as a sufficient reason, 
that Mehring, in 1752, has given this old name to a genus of the 
Gruide, a name which the oldest authors have given to an Owl. 
In the Owls, as a whole family, the ear is predominantly de- 
veloped, as in all the animals which look for their food in the 
twilight or in the night. We see this fact in my second order of 
mammalia, which I have called Mammalia ornithoidea or glires, 
and which I have composed of the suborders, 1. Noctugrada (lemur,, 
Linn.), 2. Chiroptera, 3. Marsupialia, 4. Insectivora, 5. Rodentia. 
All these mammalia are, with very few exceptions, twilight or night 
animals, with very fine hearing but with weak sight. 
We see the same among the Felidw, Foxes, and distinctly 
by Otocyon (canis), lalandi, which has the longest ears but the 
weakest sight. 
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