PRIMARIES 741 
owing to its great powers of flight it frequently wanders far from 
its home, and more than a score of examples have been recorded 
as occurring in the British Islands. In the south-east of Europe a 
second and closely-allied species, G. nordmanni or G. melanoptera, 
which has black instead of chestnut inner wing-coverts, accompanies 
or, further to the eastward, replaces it ; and in its turn it is replaced 
in India, China and Australia by G. orientalis. Australia also 
possesses another species, G. grallaria, remarkable for the great 
length of its wings and much longer legs, while its tail is scarcely 
forked—peculiarities that have led to its being considered the type 
of a distinct genus or subgenus Stfiltia. 'Two species, G. lactea and 
G. cinerea, from India and Africa respectively, seem by their pale 
coloration to be desert-forms, and they are the smallest of this 
curious little group. The species whose mode of nidification is 
known lay either two or three eggs, stone-coloured, blotched, spotted 
and streaked with black or brownish-grey. The young when 
hatched are clothed in down and are able to run at once—just as 
are young Plovers. 
PRIMARIES, the larger quill-feathers of the wing growing 
from the manus, the rational mode of counting which is to begin, as 
with the CUBITALS, at the wrist, but to proceed outwards, so that the 
distal quill is the last, and not the first as in the popular way of 
enumeration. The number of Primaries varies little. Most Birds 
possess 10 or 11; but 12 are found in Podicipes, Phenicopterus and 
some of the Ciconiidx, as Anastomus, Leptoptilus, Mycteria and Tantalus. 
As a rule the first 6 quills rest upon the united metacarpal bones 
ii. and iii., and when there are 12 Primaries 7 of them so originate, 
but the following Primary is always borne by the first phalanx of digit 
ili., while the next two quills are attached in all Carinatx to the first 
phalanx of digit ii., its second phalanx carrying the rest—3 in 
Struthio, 2 in birds with 11, and only 1 in those with 10 Primaries ; 
but here are to be mentioned certain special conditions. Struthio 
has as many as 16 Primaries, 8 of which belong to the metacarpals, 
while Rhea has the normal 12, and in Casuarius only 2 or 3 are 
attached to the manus, the rest of its barbless quills being really 
Cubitals. Archxopteryx apparently had only 6 or 7 Primaries, but 
it is doubtful whether they proceeded from the index and its 
metacarpal alone, or chiefly from the third digit and its metacarpal.” 
Peculiar conditions, hitherto unexplained, prevail also in the Sphenisei, 
1 In a wider sense the stiff feathers, from 2 to 4 in number, which grow from 
the POLLEX, and form the alu/da or ‘‘ bastard wing,” may also be accounted 
Primaries. 
2 As before stated (p. 279) the manus of Archxopteryax had 3 free digits ; but 
I conceive the figure from Vogt (p. 280) to be fanciful and erroneous. The main 
point is the regularly-increasing number of the phalanges—the pollex having 2, 
the index 3 and the third digit 4. 
