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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



surpasses, or even equals, this Jurassic limestone of Bavaria in 

 this respect, and therefore the lithographers of the whole earth 

 receive their lithographic stones froih the quarries of Solenhofeu. 

 We may obtain an idea of the exceptional and uniform way in 

 which this limestone has been deposited when we see the impres- 

 sions and casts of jelly-fish and other delicate animals, which are 

 found as fossils in this stone and in no other known deposit. 



In this lithographic stone of Bavaria there was found, in the 



Fig. 7. Auch-eopteryx macrouka, restored (after Owen). 



year 1860, the impression of a feather. This proved the existence 

 of a bird during the Jurassic period that is, of a feathered ani- 

 mal much older than all other known fossil birds. It was there- 

 fore named Archceopteryx, which means " old wing." The feather 

 was there ; a sharp lookout was kept now for the bird itself, and, 

 indeed, one year later, a nearly complete skeleton of it was found. 

 It was bought by the British Museum, in London, for fourteen 

 thousand marks, and has been described by Prof. Owen, Sixteen 

 years later, in 1877, a second specimen was discovered in Solen- 

 hofen. The electrician, Dr. Siemens, in Berlin, did not wish that 

 this fossil should also go out of Germany ; therefore he bought 

 it for twenty thousand marks, and sold it afterward, at the same 

 price, to the Prussian Government. It is now in the Berlin Mu- 

 seum. 



Both specimens together furnish us with an almost complete 

 picture of the Jurassic bird. The Archceopteryx was about the 

 size of a pigeon. The Berlin specimen proves that its bill was 

 also provided with teeth. Furthermore, the vertebrae show also 

 that biconcave form, as in Ichthyornis and in lower animals. 

 But there are a number of other features in the Archceopteryx 

 which remove it still further from the birds of the present time, 

 and make it resemble a reptile : 1. Its wing bones were not grown 

 together in the way of all the other birds, but they were partially 



