Spurious Primaries in the Red-eyed Yireo. ■ — On September 3, 
1877, at Bar Harbor, Me., I shot a Red-eyed Yireo ( Vireo olivaceus) 
which is curiously abnormal in having well-developed Spurious first pri- 
maries, which measure 1.16 inches in length, the wing measuring 3.15 
inches. Through the kindness of Mr. J. A. Allen, I have examined the 
Vireos of this species in the collection of the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology, and find in a series of about seventy specimens four more cases of 
the same variation. They are as follows : Ho. 23,281 (Coll. M. C. Z., from 
Coalburg, W. Va.) with spurious primaries on both wings measuring 1.17 
inches (wing, 3.23) ; No. 23,274 (Coll. M. C. Z., same locality), with a 
spurious primary only on the left wing, measuring l.lOinches (wing, 2.92) ; 
No. 4285 (Coll. M. C. Z., from Newtonville, Mass.), with spurious primaries 
on both wings, measuring 1.09 inches(wing, 3.02); and No. 4793 (Coll. M. C. 
Z., same locality) with a spurious primary on the left wing, measuring 1.15 
inches, the wing measuring 3.21. It may be well to say that they are not 
the first primary coverts, but are true spu rious primaries, lying in the same 
plane as the other primaries, and differing from the spurious primaries of 
other species of this family only in being somewhat smaller. This varia- 
tion seems particularly interesting from the fact that the presence or ab- 
sence of a spurious primary has been to some extent taken as a basis ol 
classification in this family. — Charles F. Batchelder, Cambridge, Mass. 
BuU.N.0.0. 3, April, 1878, p. 97 9 * 
