278 FLYING REPTILES AND QUADRUPEDS. 



feathered reptile. Richard Owen, having obtained possession 

 of it for the British Museum, has just issued a memoir in which 

 he describes and illustrates this interesting fossil under the name 

 Archeopteryx, with the fullest details; and, in summing up its 

 singularly diversified features pro et contra, he designates it as a 

 bird with strong reptilian characters. 



Not all Vertebrates that have wings are Birds. The Bats are 

 a numerous group of warm-blooded Quadrupeds which fly as 

 rapidly as most birds. In past geological ages there were cer- 

 tain Reptiles, like this one here (fig. 186) known as the Ptero- 



Fig. 186. 



dactyls, which evidently had a power of flight equal to that of 

 the Bats.* Some of the Pterodactyls were gigantic, and, as 

 Richard Owen has estimated, " had a probable expanse of wing 

 of from eighteen to twenty feet." 



Now did time allow I could go on and show how and where 

 occurs the passage from the Birds to the Mammals, or from the 

 Reptiles to the Mammals; but I will only refer to one of these 



* It has been argued by some that as the Pterodactyls have scarcely any 

 median ridge to the sternum, they could not possess such a basis of attachment 

 for the pectoral muscles as would be sufficient to sustain them in flight ; and 

 that therefore the wing-like fore-arms were used merely as paddles to swim with. 

 Let any one inspect the sternum of the Bat, and he will there find, in its very 

 low median keel, just as good an argument why that animal should not fly, 

 although we know that it does, as in the case of the Pterodactyl. 



Fig. 186. Pterodactylus. A flying Lizard which lived in the middle or 

 Mesozoic age. A copy of a figure which was drawn from a model constructed 

 under the supervision of, and after a restoration by, Richard Oiven, and set up 

 in the gardens of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, England. 



