Abstract. D. SHANKS [11 ] has given a heuristical argument for the fact that there are "more" primes in the non-quadratic residue classes mod q than in the quadratic ones. In this paper we confirm SHANKS' conjecture in all cases q < 25 in the following sense. If l, is a quadratic residue, 12 a non-residue modq, e (n, q, l,, ~z) takes the values -F 1 or -l according to n = I I or l~ mod q, thenfor 0 ~ ~ < 1/2. In the general ease the same holds, if all zeros ~ = fl + i y of all L (s, :~ mod q), q fix, satisfy the inequality fl" -7 "~ < l/4.