174 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
numbering of the feathers, and to count them outwards from 
the carpal joint. The 1st remex, therefore, of both the 
Cubital and the Antecubital region is that next the carpus, 
and from this the Cubitals are numbered in the direction of 
the humeral joint, while the Antecubitals are counted in the 
opposite direction. The same rule is adopted with their 
respective coverts. The lst Antecubital Remex is generally 
very much reduced in size, or may even be absent entirely. 
Where it is present it was often regarded as a covert feather 
until Mr Each pointed out its true nature.! Antecubital 
remiges 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are seated in the metacarpals, 8 is 
situated on the 3rd digit, 9 and 10 on the Ist phalanx, 11 on 
the 2nd phalanx, and 12, distinguished as the Remicle, on 
the 3rd phalanx.2 Passing to the cubitus, we find the 
feather usually regarded as the Ist cubital remex seated 
partly in many cases, and entirely seated in others, upon the 
carpal bone. Beyond the 1st the remaining remiges, in 
one section of the Euornithes, succeed each other uniformly 
and without any break, up to near the humeral joint. Here, 
in the birds whose forearm has been shortened within recent 
times, the terminal feathers are often soft, and more or less 
reduced in size, as if any reduction of the feathers consequent 
upon the shortening of the forearm had taken place gradually 
at the humeral end of the cubitus. That this is the correct 
view will be rendered highly probable by some details 
respecting the coverts to be given presently. In another 
section of birds, the continuity of the remiges is interrupted, 
and the “ fifth” is either absent entirely, or else is, it appears 
to me, reduced to a small downy feather, which does duty as 
one of the inner coverts. Whether I am correct in this view 
or not is immaterial, as in either case the 5th cubital remex 
is functionally absent. Those birds in which the (reputed) 
5th cubital remex is present are distinguished as quincubital, 
and those in which it is functionless are termed aquincubital. 
For the reasons given above, these terms are not exactly 
suitable; but as zoologists have generally adopted them, it is 
1 Pycraft, Contribution tothe Pterylography of Birds’ Wings. 
2 See Sir William Flower’s specimens at the Natural History Musenm, upon 
which part of this description is based. 
