January 6, 1888.] 



SCIENCE. 



rill Ricketts, • The Dermal Coverings of Animals and Plants ; ' Jan. 

 27, Joseph F. James, ' The Great Deserts of the Earth ; ' Feb. 3, 

 Amos R. Wells, ' Volcanoes; ' Feb. 10, D. S. Young, ' Some Char- 

 acteristics of Fishes ; ' Feb. 17, Charles Dury, ' Reason and Instinct 

 in Animals ; ' Feb. 24, Walter S. Christopher, ' Bacteria and Fer- 

 mentation ; ' March 2, F. W. Langdon, ' Races of Man ; ' March 9, 

 A. B. Thrasher, ' The Voices of Animals.' 



— The Council of the American Economic Association held its 

 annual meeting in Hamilton Hall, Columbia College, at 10.30 a.m., 

 Friday, Dec. 30. 



— Th& Poh'tzcal Science Quarterly ior December contains sev- 

 eral articles that are worth reading, though none of special impor- 

 tance. Two of them are on the subject of profits and wages, — a 

 subject that is sure to attract readers, but on which we cannot say 

 that much light is shed. Professor Clark recognizes the fact, which 

 most economists overlook, that a large portion of the employer's 

 profits is of a mercantile character, arising from buying and selling 

 to good advantage rather than from special skill in production ; but, 

 strangely enough, he thinks that this profit is due to causes beyond 

 the employer's control, and " comes to him as rain from the clouds ; " 

 whereas it is due in great measure to his skill in taking advantage 

 of the markets so as to buy at a low price and sell at a high one. 

 The opening article of the number is a vigorous attack on the oleo- 

 margarine law, and will be read with interest by all opponents of 

 government interference. The article on local government in Eng- 

 land is of interest just now, when new and extensive changes in 

 that branch of the English Government are in contemplation. 

 There is also an article of considerable historical interest, on the 

 Constitution in reconstruction, giving an account of the contest be- 

 tween Congress and President Johnson in regard to the recogni- 

 tion of the Southern States and the guaranties to be required of 

 them before such recognition was granted. The closing essay is 

 on India's unadjusted trade balance, and the usual complement of 

 book-reviews fills up the number. This review, together with the 



Journal of Economics issued at Harvard, and the various publica- 

 tions of the Johns Hopkins University, are an addition to our 

 periodical literature ; for they furnish a kind of reading that we 

 should otherwise hardly get. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*»* Correspondents are requested to he as brie/' as possible. Tke writer's naone is 

 in all cases required as proof of sood faith. 



Twenty copies of tke nuynber containing his communication will be furnished 

 free to any correspondent on request. 



The editor will be glad to publish any queries consonant with the character of 

 the journal. 



The Flight of Birds. 



In your issue of last week, my friend. Dr. Elliott Coues, takes 

 part in the current discussion of the flight of birds with his usual 

 boldness and independence, but not with his usual care and accu- 

 racy. He practically begins his letter with the following ex cathedra 

 condemnation of Professor Trowbridge's theory, and denial of his 

 facts : " With regard to the alleged locking of the primaries : i. It 

 does not take place ; 2. Did it take place, flight would be impossi- 

 ble." 



As Professer Trowbridge is abundantly able to defend himself, I 

 leave the answer to the above extraordinary statements to him, and 

 will simply remark, in passing, that I know from my own observa- 

 tion that the locking of the primaries can and does occur, either by 

 accident or design, and that when it takes place it does not render 

 flight impossible, as it affects only the extremities of the feathers. 

 It is evident that Dr. Coues has not taken pains to inform himself 

 in regard to the facts brought forward by Professor Trowbridge, 

 otherwise he would not have uttered such dogmatic assertions. 



Further on, Dr. Coues decapitates me much in the same way he 

 does Professor Trowbridge ; for he says, " The fixing of the wing 

 of a mortally wounded bird in the manner described by Professor 

 Newberry does not bear on the case. It is simply a muscular 

 rigidity due to nervous shock, and of a part with the convulsive 

 muscular action, which, under similar circumstances, results in the 

 well-known ' towering ' of hard-hit birds." 



We have here other proof that Dr. Coues has not read all that 

 has been said in this discussion : if he had done so, he would have 



seen that I did not claim that the automatic rigidity of the arm and 

 fore-arm, the ' setting ' of the wing, first described by Professor 

 Wyman, had any thing whatever to do with the locking of the 

 primaries. As was said in the discussion of Professor Trow- 

 bridge's paper before the Academy of Sciences, and reported in my 

 former letter to Science, the spreading and folding, and, according 

 to Professor Trowbridge, the locking of the primaries, are functions 

 of the manus, and have nothing to do with the flexion and extension 

 of the arm. The spread of the wings of the turkey-buzzard main- 

 tained after death, reported by me in my ' Notes on the Birds of 

 Northern California and Oregon ' {Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 

 vi. Zoology, p. 74), was certainly not a case of muscular spasm. 

 My report of it will be found at the place cited, and is as fol- 

 lows : — 



" For the purpose of examining this bird in California, to deter- 

 mine for myself its identity, or otherwise, with the turkey-buzzard 

 of the East, I took occasion to shoot one which was flying over us 

 in the upper part of the Sacramento valley. He made no motion 

 indicating that he had been struck by my shot, but sailed on with 

 widely expanded and motionless wings, as before. Gradually, how- 

 ever, he began to descend in wide and regular circles, till finally, 

 without a wing-flap, he settled as lightly as a feather on the prairie, 

 and remained motionless. I went to him, and found him resting 

 in the grass, his wings still widely and evenly expanded, but the 

 head drooping and life extinct. It was a male, large, in fine plum- 

 age, and apparently identical with ours ; then, too late, I regretted 

 that I had been the cause of a death so calm and dignified." 



I have been shooting now for a great many years, have killed 

 many thousands of birds, and ought to know what their behavior is 

 when mortally wounded ; yet I do not hesitate to say that the ex- 

 tension of the wings in this case and those reported by Dr. Storer 

 was not due to muscular spasm, but to a locking of the wing- 

 bones. Nor had the death of the turkey-buzzard, cited above, any 

 thing whatever in common with the phenomena of ' towering,' as 

 asserted by Dr. Coues. Towering is exhibited only by birds which 

 are wounded in the head, and which, with confused intellects, fly 

 up and up, perhaps till lost to view. I have reported one such case 

 in my notes which is typical, and I here repeat my account of it to 

 show that it was totally distinct from all wing-setting, spasmodic 

 or articular. 



" Once when collecting water-birds on San Pablo Bay, California, 

 I shot a gull {Larits Hermanni), which fell, apparently dead, upon 

 some rocks near me. When I stooped to pick it up, however, it 

 flew swiftly away, and mounted in circles higher and higher until 

 it disappeared." 



The article by Bergmann in Miiller's Archiv fiir Anatomic und 

 Physiologie (1839) has no bearing upon the statements made by 

 Professor Trowbridge or myself. It is true that Bergmann de- 

 scribes the sliding of the radius on the ulna, and in the discovery 

 of this anatomical feature he antedates Wyman ; but he makes no 

 reference to the ' setting ' of birds' wings, which was the special 

 subject of Professor Wyman 's note. All Bergmann says about the 

 function of the anatomical peculiarity which he pointed out is, 

 " that it is desirable that observations should be made (for which 

 he had no opportunity) to determine whether it might not have 

 efficiency in the soaring of rapacious birds or in the flight of those 

 which must quickly change the direction of their flight." 



In conclusion I will venture to suggest that neither Professor 

 Trowbridge nor myself are such tyros in science as to warrant the 

 didactic tone which Dr. Coues assumes. Professor Trowbridge 

 needs no indorsement from me, but I venture to say that he is one 

 of the most eminent engineers in the country, and that he has oc- 

 cupied himself for many years in the study of the mechanics of ani- 

 mal locomotion, upon which subject he is as well informed as any 

 one living. As for myself, I was for many years as enthusiastic an 

 ornithologist as Dr. Coues himself, and have shot over as much 

 ground, and have perhaps killed as many birds. I was also edu- 

 cated as a physician, and, at the time I made the observations cited 

 above, I was serving as naturalist and medical officer to a detach- 

 ment of troops. 



I would also call attention to the fact, that, for all the interesting 

 information we now have in regard to the structure and functions 

 of the wings of birds, we are indebted, not to ornithologists, but to 



