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. arientalis. 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 Stiltia. 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. 1 The number of Primaries varies little. Most Birds 

 possess 10 or 11 ; but 12 are found in Podicipes, Phwnicopterus and 

 some of the Ciconiidte, 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 1 2 Primaries 7 of them so originate, 

 but the following Primary is always borne by the first phalanx of digit 

 iii., while the next two quills are attached in all Carinatse 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 1 6 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. Archseopteryx 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. 2 

 Peculiar conditions, hitherto unexplained, prevail also in the Sphenisci, 



1 In a wider sense the stiff feathers, from 2 to 4 in number, which grow from 

 the POLLEX, and form the alula or "bastard wing," may also be accounted 

 Primaries. 



2 As before stated (p. 279) the manus of Arch&opteryx 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. 



