THE



Hvicultura



BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



VOL. IV. — No. 40. All rights reserved. FEBRUARY, 1898.


A BIRD'S WING.


B}^ Arthur G. Butler, Ph.D.


Some of the members of our Society have expressed a

wish for a drawing of the wing of a bird with an explanation of

its parts, to enable them to follow intelligently the descriptions

of species which appear from time to time in our pages. Our

Secretary asked me if I would undertake the work, which of

course I willingly agreed to, being only too happ}^ to be

permitted to do what little I can towards the advancement of

knowledge in this branch of our hobby.


The simplest plan would have been to prepare a mere

outline map of some full-feathered species ; but it occurred to

me that it is not always easy for anyone with a map before him

to recognize the corresponding feathers in an adlual specimen,

owing to their frequent displacement in sickly or dead birds, and

to the absence of sharply-defined lines, due to their fringed ends

and compact arrangement : I therefore determined to make a

detailed drawing of an actual wing, and I consulted with Mr.

Gronvold (a very talented taxidermist and draughtsman) as to

the most suitable subject for ni}^ illustration. This gentleman

kindly selected and lent me the wing of an Australian Bower-

bird, yEhirocdtis crassirostris, in which the ends of the chief

feathers are rendered prominent by white terminal spots, and

which will serve as a good typical model.


The quill-feathers of the wing separate into two well-

defined series — primaries and secondaries, and serve much the

same purpose as the front and 'hind wings of a butterfly (whicli

have consequently received the same names, the front-wings

being called primaries and the hind-wings secondaries). The

first primary (fig. i) is often veiy short and may be easily over-

looked in some families by superficial observers. It has been

called ' bastard primary ' by Seebohni and many other writers ;



