

























































































100 Prof. Newton on the Assignation 
are so few that they may be safely and wisely discarded for 
the sake of uniformity and consistency. It is possible that 
there may be some three or four more Linnean genera (but 
certainly not half a dozen) in which, by the application of 
this principle, the true type is discoverable; but even these, 
supposing them all to go against the generally accepted view 
(and it is, of course, by no means certain that they would), 
could not disturb more than a very small number of genera 
and ought not to flutter the most conservative of ornitho- 
logists, while only by those (if unhappily there are such) 
who have sinned against light and knowledge should the 
principle be regarded with disfavour. 
I now return to the genus Strix, which is the cause of these 
tedious remarks, and first have to deal with Mr. Salvin’s note 
(Ibis, 1875, pp. 66, 67). According to him I “truly” said 
“that Stri# aluco is Brisson’s type of the Linnean genus 
Strizv as restricted.” Now, unfortunately, I did not say this 
truly; and herein lies the error I have to acknowledge. I 
shall urge little or nothing in extenuation of my crime. 
It would only protract the present paper to show how many 
others, from Savigny to my critics, have fallen into it; but 
error it undoubtedly is, as I hope to prove without fear of 
— contradiction. | 
The type assigned by Brisson (Orn. i. p. 500) to his genus 
Strix (which is, saving the species removed to form his genus 
Asio, also that of Linnzeus) is le Chat-huant. On that point 
all will agree; and all will also agree that his Chat-huant, or 
type of Strix, is, as Brisson’s excellent description shows, the 
bird which we in England know as the Brown or Tawny Owl, 
the species which has been frequently called Syrnium aluco, 
and repeatedly figured under that name or some admitted 
equivalent of it. But this species was not only described by 
Brisson. He also gave a long list of references to other authors 
whom he, rightly or wrongly, believed to have mentioned the 
same bird. The only one of these with which we need now 
trouble ourselves is the first, from the ‘ Fauna Suecica’ (p. 18) 
—the edition of 1746 of course. Brisson correctly quotes Lin- 
neus’s Short diagnosis of the latter’s “ No. 55,” with a refer- 

