THE WEAPONS AND WINGS OF BIRDS. 661 



From spurs to claws is an easy transition, since tlie only difference 

 between them is in their location, claws being at the ends of toes and 

 fingers, while spurs are placed on or near the ankle and wrist. While 

 the claws on a bird's wing, for claws as well as spurs are found there, 

 serve no purpose as weapons and are seemingly of no use at all in old 

 birds, they have a great deal of interest attached to them. 



One who has had the good fortune to see the purple gallinule in its 

 native swamps may have seen the little ones climbing out of their nest 

 and scrambling over the branches very much like four-footed animals. 

 Or, if not the purple gallinule, he may perhaps have seen the young of 

 its humble relative, the Florida gallinule, pulling itself up some little 

 incline by its wings, something as a bat hooks himself along.* If the 



Fig. 7. 



OUTER PORTION OF WING OF SCREAMER, ANHTMA ANHIMA. 



Reduced. 



observer has investigated he will have found on the outermost finger 

 of the wing a small, sharp claw, and may have wondered what this 

 claw was doing there. 



Tliis claw is of very common occurrence, and is especially frequent 

 among water birds, or those which are lowest or most generalized in 

 their structure. Sometimes this claw is so small as to almost escape 

 detection, and again, as in the turkey buzzard, it may be so large that 

 it can be found at once. Occasionally, very occasionally in fact, there 

 is a second minute claw, or rudiment of a claw, hidden among the 

 feathers at the very end of the wing bone, but this needs to be care- 

 fully looked for. Without a knowledge of fossil birds, it might be diffi- 

 cult to satisfactorily explain the presence of this useless claw, but if 

 we regard rudimentary organs in existing forms as shadows of the past 

 and vestiges of complete useful parts in extinct animals, the reason for 

 its presence is clear, and we will look upon the little wing claws of mod 

 ern birds as reminiscences of well-clawed ancestors. The earliest bird 

 with which we are at present acquainted is the well known Arclmop- 

 teryx, from the lithographic states of Solenhofen, Bavaria, and this form 

 seems not only to have had wings for flight, but hands for climbing. 



*Nuttall Bulletin, 1882, p. 124, and The Ibis, 1889, p. 577. 



