774 Shedding of the Claws in the Ptarmigan, ete. 
ON THE SHEDDING OF THE CLAWS IN THE PTAR- 
MIGAN AND ALLIED BIRDS. 
BY LEONHARD STEJNEGER. 
T fact of the ptarmigans shedding their claws regularly every — 
summer, seems not to have been observed personally by anyad 
the many excellent American ornithologists, and has, a 
been comparatively little known to them. It may consequently 
not be without interest to demonstrate this process, as I hwe — 
material at hand which shows the procedure very plainly. : 
The late Professor Sven Nilsson, the famous Swedish zoôl- 
gist, was the first to discover this peculiarity in the ptarmigass. 
His countryman, Professor W. Meves, afterward confirmed bis 4 
observations, and at the same time proved that this singular 3 
shedding of the claws also occurs in other birds of the family q 
Tetraonidz, as, for instance, in both sexes of Bonasa bones, — 
Urogallus urogallus, and also, in the female at least, of Lyre 
tetrix. 
As will be seen in the specimens of the Lagopus ridgwayi 
new species which I was fortunate enough to detect on the 
Commander islands, near Kamtschatka), shot in June. and 
August, before shedding, the middle claw measures 18-20 
while in the specimen shot on the 23d of August, and which bas 
just thrown the old ones off, the length of the new claw 1$ 9%% 
11™- More instructive still is a male, shot on the same day, 
as it has the claws only partially shed. The old claws have be A 
come loosened from their base and are forced 2-377 00t, S- 
covering the tip of the new ones, except on two toes, from ` 
they have already dropped off. Hence it is obvious that 
process is not a pathological one, in whi h the nail drops of 
pathological one, in whic 
soon as it is perfectly separate from its bed, and has 
receive nourishment through the blood-vessels. ne ditt 
one of the Shumagin islands, Alaska. About this ae 
Bean remarks in his “ Notes on Birds collected in Alaska, gt 
the Proc. U. S. Nat, Mus., 1882, p. 163, as follows: “THE, 
men (shot on July 21st) corresponds very closely in most July 
with number 33,548, a female from Norway, collected 
Read before the Biological Society of Washington, April 5th, iaa 
