Identifier: reptilesbirds00figu (find matches)
Title: Reptiles and birds : a popular account of their various orders, with a description of the habits and economy of the most interesting
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Figuier, Louis, 1819-1894 Gillmore, Parker
Subjects: Reptiles Birds
Publisher: London : Cassell & Co.
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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etermine the affinities otthe bird. But the calcareous mud of the ancient sea-bottom, whichhas hardened into the famous lithographic slate of Solenhofen,revealed to Hermann von Meyer, in 1861, first the impressionof a feather, and, in the same year, the independent discoveryof a skeleton of the bird itself, which Von Meyer had namedArchceopteryx lithographiciis. This relic of a far-distant age nowadorns the British Museum. The skull of the Archaeopteryx is almost lost, but the leg, the foot, * Vide, however, p. 8. —Ed. CONNECTING LINKS IN CLASSIFICATION. 3 the pelvis, the shoulder-gu-dle, and the feathers, as far as theirstructure can be made out, are completely those of existing birds.Two digits of the Manus have curved claws, and, to all appearance,the metacarjDal bones are quite free and disunited, exhibiting,according to Professor Huxley, closer approximation to the reptilianstructure than any existing bird. Mr. Evans has even detected thatthe mandibles were provided with teeth.
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Fig. I.—Archaeopteryx lithograpTiicus. On the other hand, the same writer points out certain peculiaritiesin the single reptile found also among the Solenhofen slates whichhas been described and named Compsogtiathus longipes by the lateAndreas Wagner. This reptile he declares to be a still nearerapproximation to the missing link between reptiles and birds, thusfurther narrowing the gap between the two classes. While we think it proper to point to these structural resemblancesof one class of the animal creation to others very different in tlieirexternal appearance, it is necessary to guard our readers fromadopting the inferences sometimes deduced; that these infinitelydiversified forms are merely the final terms in an immense series of 4 REPTILES AND BIRDS. changes which have been brought about in the course of immeasur-able time by the operation of causes more or less similiar to thosewhich are at work at the present day. Domestication and othercircumstances have no doubt produced a

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