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ON THE FIRST PRIMARY IN PASSERINE BIRDS. 

 By Ernst Hartert. 



In ' The Zoologist,' 1898 (p. 241), appeared a very interesting 

 article by Messrs. A. Gardiner Butler and A. George Butler on 

 the presence of the first primary in the Fringillidce, Motacillidce, 

 and Hirundinidce, in which it has generally been supposed to be 

 absent. Most interesting as this fact is to those who did not 

 know it, and valuable as some of the special observations made 

 by Messrs. Butler are, the discovery that the first primary is 

 present in these families is not new. 



In 1888 (Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. p. 664), Dr. Gadow says of 

 those families in which the first primary has been supposed to be 

 absent, " The tenth quill* is, as a rule, reduced to a tiny feather, 

 which is hidden between the 10th covert and outer vane of the 

 9th quill." From this article we see also that an eleventh 

 primary is frequently present in front of the tenth (our " first ") 

 primary, but that this eleventh quill is completely lost in many 

 families of Passerine birds. 



Dr. Gadow's valuable article has been, it seems, most fre- 

 quently overlooked by ornithologists, and I myself did not read 

 it before I had discovered the same facts about the first primary. 

 In Novit. Zool. iii. p. 13 (1896), I said : — " I was rather surprised 

 to find that in the so-called nine-quilled (or rather nine-pri- 

 maried !) Passeres the tenth primary is not always, nay, not even 

 as a rule, and very likely never, entirely absent, but only much 

 reduced, and often difficult to find, because stiff and narrow and 

 hidden by its longer covert. From these reduced little feathers 

 to those of Pholidauges, Sturnus, or Calornis is no longer step 

 than from the latter to Acridotheres, Basilornis, and Gracula." . . . 

 On p. 14 I then acknowledged Dr. Gadow's article at length. 



The failure to find our " tenth " primary in certain families 



* Dr. Gadow calls it 10th, as he begins to count them in the middle of 

 the wing, where they meet the secondary quills. — E. H. 



Zool. 4th ser. vol. III., March, 1899. k 



