On the Claws and Spurs of Birds’ Wings . 147 
central tail-feathers rufous, irregularly patched with black; 
outer tail-feathers uniformly rich rufous, thinly margined 
on the inner sides with dusky brown, each feather banded 
with black and tipped with white ; underside of tail-feathers 
similarly marked, but of a brownish dusky shade. Under 
tail-coverts rich rufous, tipped with white. 
I take the liberty of naming this new species after my 
esteemed friend, the well-known ornithologist, Hof rath 
Dr. A. B. Meyer, Director of the Dresden Museum. 
The type specimens of these new species belong to the 
Hungarian National Museum. 
Budapest, Nov. 28, 1885. 
XIX .—On the Claws and Spurs of Birds’ Wings. 
ByP. L. Sclater, M.A., Ph.D., E.B.8. 
In the f Proceedings 3 of the Boston Society of Natural 
History for 1881 (vol. xxi. p. 301) will be found an excellent 
paper by Mr. J. Amory Jeffries, “ On the Claws and Spurs on 
Birds* * Wings/ 5 which, I regret to say, has hitherto escaped 
notice in the columns of this Journal. It is, however, 
eminently worthy of careful study. Mr. Jeffries shows 
definitely for the first time, so far as I can make out*, that 
the spurs which are in some cases found on the wings of 
birds are of an entirely different nature from the claws also 
met with on the same organs, and have, in fact, nothing 
whatever to do with them. 
The spur, as Mr. Jeffries points out, is a structure on the 
wing which corresponds to the spur on the tarsus of the 
* Even so recent-an authority as Dr. Selenka ( ( Bronn’s Thier-Reich,’ 
Aves, p. 75) has confounded together the spur and claw of birds. His 
account of the subject contains several serious misstatements, and is 
obviously not based on his own examination. Owen’s 1 Anatomy of 
Vertebrates’ (cf °P- h* P- 74) likewise confounds claws and spurs. It 
must be even admitted that Nitzsch (usually a model of accuracy, and 
the first scientific describer of the claws of birds) did not quite under? 
stand the differences between claws and spurs (see his f Osteographische 
Beitrage,’ no. 5. “ Ueber das Nagelglied der Fliigelfinger, besonders des 
Daumens : ” Leipzig, 1811). 
