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REMARKS ON THE FORM OF THE TOES OF 



BIRDS. 



Although naturalists have laboured, more especially since the time 

 of the great Linnaeus, who gave an impulse to the study of natural his- 

 tory unparalleled in that of any other science, to make us acquainted with 

 animals of every class ; and although much has been done by them in 

 ornithology in particular, it requires little knowledge to be enabled to say 

 with truth that a great deal more remains to be done. To take an appa- 

 rently trivial example, let us look to the tips of the toes of birds, and we 

 shall no doubt find much that is curious, and much that has been entire- 

 ly overlooked. The examination of those parts was suggested to me by 

 the following occurrence. 



On the 21st of March 1816, while I was residing at Henderson in 

 Kentucky, great flocks of Golden Plovers happening to be passing from 

 their winter toward their summer haunts, I procured a good number of 

 them. While engaged in drawing a fine specimen, I observed something 

 beneath the claws, which induced me to look more particularly to that 

 part of the toes, when I found there what might be called a second but 

 smaller claw, equally horny with the part properly so called. I examin- 

 ed several others, and, finding them all alike in this respect, I mentioned 

 the circumstance to a friend, who agreed with me in thinking it very cu- 

 rious. Since that period I have generally, on procuring a bird of any 

 kind, looked to its toes, and I have found many species, both of the genus 

 Charadrius and of other Grallae, similarly supplied with double claws. 



Although I use this term, however, let it not be supposed that I con- 

 sider the parts in question as really subsidiary or secondary claws ; for 

 as they are not furnished with a central bone, or process either from the 

 last phalanx or that next to it, they cannot be truly considered as such, 

 however much they may sometimes resemble them. 



But, in order to explain to you what I mean, let us take a general 

 view of the subject. If we examine the foot of any common land bird, a 

 domestic fowl for example, we observe that the extremity of its toes under 

 the nail are rounded, and covered with quincuncial papillae, generally 

 flattened. The extreme degree of this rounded form is seen in the Eagles 

 and Hawks, of which the end of the toe projects beneath the claw, having 



