C30 STLTCTURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS 



of these ; FTIIBRING-ER places the number between that 

 figure and forty. Most of the restorations allow thirty- 

 two or thirty-four. This number is important ; it is in 

 excess of that generally found in living birds, although the 

 tail itself is not composed of actually more vertebrae. 

 Among recent birds it is perhaps a significant fact that 

 llie penguins alone have this number. Of remigcs seven- 

 teen appears to have been the number, six or seven 

 primaries and ten secondaries. No existing bird has 

 so few primaries, the nearest approach being nearly all the 

 Anomalogonatae (and some other birds too), which have ten. 

 There is some difference of opinion as to how these remiges 

 were attached to the arm and hand. DAMES, in his elaborate 

 monograph upon Arcliceoptenjx, puts forward the view that 

 they were attached to the metacarpal and down to the 

 claw of digit II. MENZBIEE limits the attachment of the 

 primaries to the basal phalanx of the third, not second 

 digit. FURBEINGEE thinks that the greater number of the 

 primaries were attached to metacarpal III. and the third 

 finger, only a few being inserted upon the phalanges of 

 digit II., where the latter is overlapped by the last-mentioned 

 digit. HURST has adopted the revolutionary view that there 

 are missing, and probably cartilaginous, digits IV. and V., to 

 which the primaries were attached. As to the presumed 

 additional fingers, if they were really present, where did 

 they articulate ? The entire available space appears to be 

 taken up with the digits which are already known. In its 

 primaries Archtzopteryx is the very reverse of the penguin, 

 which it appears to resemble in its rectrices. The excep- 

 tional number to be found in that bird is not in the least 

 explained by the conditions observable in Archceopteryx. 

 A beak seems to have been absent in ArclicBopteryx, owing 

 to the fact that the teeth extend to the end of the jaws. 

 The vertebral column of this bird has some fifty vertebrae, of 

 which ten or eleven are reckoned cervical ; the smallness of 

 the number, which probably belongs to this category, is only 

 approached among the parrots and the Pico-Passeres and 

 some of their nearest allies, where, however, thirteen is the 



