ME. E. DEGEN 0^^ ECDTSIS. 405 



Whether cubital remex V. in the Passerine type of eutaxy is really a member of the 

 distal or of the middle group cannot be determined positively by means of the present 

 material ; but it will in all probability be found to belong to the latter, seeing that it 

 takes up the moult more frequently from the 6th and not from the 4th. This is only 

 what may be reasonably expected from a flight-feather which is actually remex VI., 

 and numerically only remex V., as in the present species. Of the original remex V. 

 in the Galline type of eutaxy, there is not much doubt as to its belonging to the 

 distal group. 



It has been suggested (see antea, p. 401) that the inner section of metacarpo- 

 digitals, at present situated on the combined metacarpal bones — on account of their 

 eminently "digital" character, — were elements originally belonging to the digital 

 phalanges of digit III. Since we have found in our former '■' proto-metacarpal digitals " 

 (cubital group II.) the true original metacarpal elements belonging to the metacarpal 

 bone of the latter digit, we see that this distribution leaves us minus a similar 

 equivalent for the metacarpal bone of digit II. 



From this the question arises as to what has become of this series, or are they really 

 anywhere at all \ 



The answer to it is not so obscure, and is one to which Goodchild, Wray, and 

 Pycraft have contributed. 



The survivors of this set of feathers are present still in the diastataxic wing, and the 

 older forms of the eutaxic birds, in the shape of that enigma of a part-series, which is 

 situated on the distal portion of the forearm known as the " intercalary row." In the 

 majority of those birds this row consists of from 5-6 feathers, but their number is 

 reduced to 4 in some. If they are not actually the aborted flight-feathers themselves 

 (as I suspect them to be, from the fact that in the specimen of a young Parrot — vide 

 text-figure 2, p. 364, — contrary to the presence of sessile neossoptiles for all the other 

 covert-feathers, the latter are, curiously enough, absent on both sides) they are at least 

 the major coverts of the entirely suppressed remiges to which they belonged, and 

 which are the set of feathers to be yet accounted for. 



This latter supposition would constitute a case of" apoptilism " for the whole series, 

 the same as applies to that of the Parapterum (Degen, i6). Of their pterylo-genetic 

 relationship to the other covert-series on the dorsum, I would refer to Goodchild (27), 

 in whose drawings they are marked by the letter C. Goodchild has found them to be 

 such excellent landmarks for the determination of the rows that the following quotation 

 from his paper gives a sufficient idea as to their value for further colhiteral evidence. 

 This is what he says on p. 189, I. c. : — 



" In the type of wing-feathers prevailing throughout all, or nearly all, the rest of the 

 Psittacidse (in speaking of an additional row of backward-lapping wing-feathers in 

 Melopsittacus) an additional modification may be observed. The row of feathers 



