Genus— M EGASTRIX. 
Megasteix Kaup, Isis 1848, col. 770 . . . . . . Type M. tenehricosa. 
Laege Tytonine (?) Owls, with long bills, pronounced facial discs, long wings, 
medium tails and powerful legs and feet. 
I have queried the association of the birds of this genus with the 
Tytonine forms, though other workers generally have included them in the 
genus Strix (= Tyto), 
The bill is longer than in Tyto, but similar in constitution superficially 
as regards the nostrils and cere : the facial disc is also pronounced and 
therefore resembles the preceding. 
The wings are entirely different, and the most casual examination would 
have suggested the separation of these birds from the preceding. While the 
tip of the wing in Tyto is formed by feathers 1, 2, 3, second longest and first 
equal to third or scarcely less, in the present genus the fourth is longest, the 
first shorter than the second, third, fifth and sixth and little longer than the 
seventh : the second is slightly longer than the sixth, while it is much longer 
than the first, though shorter than the third, which is about equal to the 
fifth. It is somewhat obvious, then, that the workers who have associated a 
form like this with the preceding have been careless, to say the least of it. 
The figures here given will fuUy explain this. 
The tail is square and just about half the length of the wing. 
The tarsus is short and stout, completed but scantily feathered, and 
about half the length of the tail ; the toes are stout and long, more than half 
the tarsal length, and are coarsely reticulated, the reticulations bearing each 
a verj^ short hair-like feather, only down the front, the sides being naked. 
The inner toe is equal in length to the middle one, while neither much exceeds 
the outer. The middle claw is sometimes serrate, often obscurely so, and the 
serrations are quite absent in other cases. 
The coloration of this genus is distinctive and I now query its relation- 
ship with the “ Barn Owls.” The fact that the peculiar wing formation has 
been overlooked by the writers who have considered it a Barn Owl does not 
prejudice me in favour of the accuracy of then: other conclusions. The 
serrations on the middle claw do not seem of much genetic value, so that 
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