NAMES OF OWLS 
the sun. The snowy owl, which lives, during summer 
at least, in a country of perpetual daylight, would fare 
but badly were it to be nocturnal or even crepuscular. 
The popular belief in the night-loving habits of owls is, 
of course, accurate in so far that the majority of owls 
do, as a matter of fact, hunt at night. But that is quite 
a different thing from saying that no owl can suffer the 
day. The names Heliodilus, “ sun-fearer,” and Photo- 
dilus, “light fearer,’’ serve only to perpetuate this 
inaccuracy. These names are those of two Madagascar 
genera of owls. The snowy owl does not share in a 
curious defect of organization which mars many owls. 
The earholes, particularly large, do not show either 
superficially or in the underlying skull an asymmetry 
which is a common feature of strigine architecture. 
Like others of its kind, Nyctea nivea (or scandiaca ; it 
has several names, like most birds that have been long 
known) is rapacious in mode of life, a characteristic 
which involves adequate beak and claw, and has been 
largely responsible for placing the owls with the hawks, 
eagles, and vultures, and separating them only from 
those birds as nocturnal Rapaces. On the other hand, 
the noiseless flight, the dull greys and browns of colour 
have led some to associate these birds with the tribe of 
goatsuckers ; a likeness of plumage and flight which may 
be, after all, not so delusive as a test of affinity as some 
such resemblances are apt tobe. All that one can say 
at present with even moderate certainty is that the 
Striges are not hawks; they are not by any means to 
be placed in the same division with the Accipitres. 
What they are exactly is left to future enquirers; at 
present the anatomical knowledge, and also the absence 
of intermediate types which show a leaning, forbids 
any dogmatism. The snowy owl pursues birds, and has, 
as have most carnivorous creatures, a distinct partiality 
for the wounded and therefore defenceless birds. It is 
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