392 
C. J. Sundevall on the Wings of Birds. 
the first, second, &c. feather is the longest. This adoption 
of terms in place of definitions may, indeed, he often valuable 
and useful; but it seems to me unnecessary, for when exacti¬ 
tude is required we must still always say, for example, the 
first feather is the longest, or the second feather is the longest, 
&c., which is certainly more definite than to say the wing is 
very acute ( suraigiie , acutissima) or merely acute ( aigue , 
acuta ). 
Nitzsch's remarkable work f System der Pterylographie/ 
as is well known, threw a new light on the feather-covering 
of birds in general; but as regards the structure of the wings, 
we find in it scarcely any statements except as to the number 
and structure of the remiges. The coverts are noticed 
only in a few places, and the number or constitution of their 
series, their presence or absence, distance apart, &c. are, 
remarkably enough, not mentioned at all. 
Those who have seen in the bird's wing merely a flying- 
machine and studied it in this aspect have had the least in¬ 
fluence of all upon our knowledge. It must be remarked 
that the wing always occurs in birds, but that it is not 
always an organ of flight. 
By a comparison, made about Christmas 1830, of the 
wings in a freshly killed Stria? bubo with those of Emberiza 
citrinella, I first obtained a notion of the considerable dif¬ 
ferences which exist between those organs in different genera. 
The changed position of many series of feathers and the 
great difference in the number and length of the coverts 
especially attracted my attention*. A continued investi¬ 
gation soon showed that these differences were of the 
greatest importance as external characters for the primary 
divisions of the class, and as such they were set forth in my 
“ Ornithologiska System," prepared in the year 1834, and 
printed in the ‘ Vetenskaps-Akademiens Handlingar' for 
* It must he stated that Herr W. v. Wright had about the same time 
noticed these peculiarities in the wings of birds, of which his remark¬ 
ably correct figures in the illustrated work 1 Skandinaviens Foglar ’ bear 
witness. But we did not know of each other’s discoveries until some 
years afterwards. 
