The Pterylosis of the Wild Pigeon

Abstract

RECENTLY, Dr. Jonathan Dwight called my attention to the desirability of placing on record an account of the pterylosis of the Wild Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), since material suitable for the purpose is accessible to me. For the use of this material, I takes pleasure in acknowledging my debt to Mr. Henshaw and Mr. Bangs, of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. The Museum is so fortunate as to have the skin of a very youngnestling (M. C. Z. no. 73216) from Wisconsin, which although covered with its nearly uniform coat of neossoptiles yet shows fairly well the main tracts of the pterylosis. This nestling measures about 90 mm. in length, with the bill about 15 mm. more. The skin is light brown, the neossoptiles are rather bright tawny yellow and the feather-buds of the coming contour feathers are nearly black. The wings and little stump of a tail are too badly dried up to make any study of the quills profitable, but perhaps the most striking feature of the pterylosis is the marked development of the pelvic wing so well described and figured by Beebe in the White-winged Dove (1915, Zoologica, vol. II, no. 2). In the young Ectopistes this consists of nineteen quills as against eighteen in Melopelia, but owing to the position of the tibia and the dryness of the skin, it is not possible to determine satisfactorily whether the arrangement of these quills is in reality as different from that.