the development of the wing in the game-birds. If you look 
carefully at the downy chicks of the pheasant, or even at barn- 
door fowls, you will remark that the wing-quills develop with 
surprising rapidity : so that they have feathered wings while the 
rest of the body is still down-covered. This enables them the 
more easily to escape prowling foxes and other enemies. In 
young ducks exactly the opposite condition obtains, the body is 
fully feathered long before the feathers of the wings appear. 
And this because they do not need to fly when danger threatens, 
but take to the water instead. But to return to the chicks of the 
pheasant. The wing of the chick develops at a very rapid rate. 
Within a few hours after hatching, the first traces of the coming 
flight feathers can be seen, and presently a large wing is cover- 
ing each side of the tiny body. At this stage many often 
die. The wings, which can then be examined at leisure, reveal 
an extremely interesting condition. For they repeat the features 
which obtain in the wing of the nestling hoatzin: inasmuch as 
the outermost quills are also, as yet, non-existent ; and there is 
a free finger-tip. But it is not nearly so long as in the hoatzin, 
and there is no terminal claw. Surely, from this, we may infer 
that the delayed development of the outer quills is a survival of 
a time when the ancestors of the pheasant were aboreal, and 
hatched their young in trees. Otherwise all the wing-quills 
should develop at the same time, and at the same rate. Here, 
121 
