324 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 
when they regard points of comparative anatomy. We 
candidly own, that, from placing implicit reliance upon 
the statements of M. Cuvier, in regard to many forms 
in this family which we had not personally examined, 
and the impossibility of reconciling them to our own 
views, we were induced, at the time, to abandon, in 
utter despair, all attempts to work out the groups of this 
family in Nwllinm Zoology ; and we felt more dis- 
heartened at this failure, from perceiving that those 
very points of structure which we had conceived were 
to lay the foundation of their natural arrangement, 
were precisely those upon which the divisions in the 
Rcyne Animal were professedly grounded, namely, the 
form and structure of the ears, and the modifications of 
die facial disk. Since our former notice, however, of 
this family was published, we have had the means of 
examining very many of the forms in question, and the 
result has tended to show that very little reliance can 
be placed upon the anatomical facts relative to this 
family in the Regne Animal. To justify this opinion 
we shall merely state one instance out of several. The 
great American horned owl is placed in the genus 
Otis, all the species of which are stated to have a mem- 
branaceous operculum to the ear. On closely examin- 
ing this bird, however, no such structure, as Dr. 
Richardson has also asserted, will be discovered • and 
thus we find the European and the American homed 
owls in two widely parted divisions. It is absolutely 
necessary to advert to these facts ; for if errors in com- 
parative anatomy, made by so high an authoritv, are 
passed over in silence, they will still be received as 
truths, unless pointedly adverted to by those who mav 
detect them. Having stated thus much, we shall not 
enumerate other objections which may be urged against 
the existing arrangements of the family, but proceed at 
once to lay our own before the reader. 
(260.) We have already shown that the formation 
of the ear, the eye, and the facial disk, are the pecu- 
liar distinctions of this family ; and it follows that the 
