MONOGRAPH OF THE OWLS—STRIGID, 
This is the case not only in civilized Europe but in every part of 
the world. Their appearance in the neighbourhood of houses 
is often considered as the prognostic of an early death. The 
human fancy is always more excited by twilight or night, and 
the life of all the night animals has always some portion of mysti- 
cism, on account of their slow motion and ghost-like flying, their 
dark colouring and gloomy appearance. It is on this account that 
men do not like the night animals. ‘The savage and the supersti- 
tious kill them if they find them by day-light, and only the civilized 
man protects them, because the Owls like the Chiropteres, catch 
an immense number of insects and mice, which are enemies to the 
husbandman. 
The family of Owls, as we have already said, is a very natural 
group, and the beginner in our science has only to see one and he 
can recognise all the others as members of one and the same family. 
Latham alone has committed the fault of mistaking a figure of the 
Zeraglaux connivens for a Hawk, which is corrected now by Lord 
Derby. 
All the Owls have a more or less curved bill, always simple, over- 
hanging the lower jaw, and without teeth. The lower jaw is cut 
off at the end with a tooth-like emargination on each side. The 
end is more or less ground away by the singular custom of smacking 
the bill, which some thrushes also do. The cere is never distin- 
guished by its colour. The oval nostrils are mostly placed at the 
end in the cere, and are covered like the greatest part of the bill, 
with long bristle-feathers. This, the round head and the large eyes 
placed in front, give the face a peculiarity, reminding us of the 
face of the cats, which takes as a family in the suborder Oa- 
nivora, the same second rank as Ear, Respiration and Breast- 
Carnivora. 
The plumage of the Owls is mostly soft and mostly dark coloured 
and speckled. The surface of the wings, especially in the true 
Night Owls, is covered with an extremely soft hairlike felt, so that 
it is sometimes impossible to recognise the rays. The anterior web 
of the first wing-feather, and very often the emarginations of the 
following ones have a comb-like dentilation. ‘The twelve tail-feathers 
are very often short, and very often curyed towards the centre. 
The tarsus is mostly feathered, very rarely naked or scaled, and 
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