This is certainly a very remarkable feature, but it gains 
an added interest from the fact that it has a parallel in the 
history of the development of the wing in the game-birds. 
If you look carefully at the downy chicks of the pheasant, 
or even at barn-door fowls, you will remark that the wing- 
quills develop with surprising rapidity: so that they have 
feathered wings while the rest of the body is still down- 
covered. This enables them the more easily to escape 
prowling foxes and other enemies. In young ducks exactly 
the opposite condition obtains, the body is fully feathered 
long before the feathers of the wings appear. And this 
because they do not need to fly when danger threatens, 
but take to the water instead. But to return to the chicks of 
the pheasant. The wing of the chick develops at a very 
rapid rate. Within a few hours after hatching, the first 
traces of the coming flight feathers can be seen, and presently 
a large wing is covering each side of the tiny body. At this 
stage many often die. The wings, which can then be examined 
at leisure, reveal an extremely interesting condition. For 
they repeat the features which obtain in the wing of the 
nestling hoatzin : inasmuch as the outermost quills are also, 
as yet, non-existent ; and there is a free finger-tip. But it 
is not nearly so long as in the hoatzin, and there is no terminal 
claw. Surely, from this, we may infer that the delayed 
development of the outer quills is a survival of a time when 
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