BIRD OR REPTILE WHICH ? 729 



On the same sands at Hastings there have been found large impres- 

 sions of the three-toed foot of some biped, the length of whose stride 

 was so great that it is impossible not to conclude that they were made 

 by the hind-feet of one or other of the seventy monsters whose bones 

 have been found scattered about within the narrow area of what was 

 once the banks and delta of a great Wealden river, and which, like the 

 giant-lizards, probably walked occasionally, if not always, on their hind- 

 limbs with their fore-feet elevated in front. The question again arises, 

 nor is it easy to answer, whether these forms should be called reptilian 

 birds or avian reptiles. 



In the northern gallery of the British Museum there is a very in- 

 structive specimen of a reptile, the frilled lizard of Australia, caught 

 near Port Nelson while perching on the stem of a tree. Its long tail 

 recalls at once the same appendage in the kangaroos, inasmuch as by 

 its position in the stuffed specimen the creature would seem to use it as 

 a support to its body. Its fore feet are much smaller than its hind, and 

 an Australian resident, to whom the specimen was shown in presence of 

 Dr. Gunther and himself so Dr. Woodward tells in a paper read before 

 the Geological Society remarked that it not merely sits up occasion- 

 ally, but habitually runs on the ground on its hind-legs without allow- 

 ing its fore-paws to touch the earth. The edges of its jawbones are 

 elevated into enamel-tipped denticulations, which remind us of those in 

 the jawbone of the Sheppey fossil. In the same slates which have 

 given us the long-tailed reptilian bird and the long-necked, birdlike liz- 

 ard, there has been found a three-toed bipedal track which "reminded 

 me," said Dr. Woodward, "at once of what the frilled lizard or the 

 compsognathus might produce under favorable conditions. The slab 

 presents a median track formed by the tail drawn along on the ground ; 

 the two hind-feet with outspread toes leave their mark, while the fore- 

 paws just touch the ground, leaving a dot-like impression on either 

 side of the median line. The median track is alternately stronger and 

 fainter. Since the tail of the archseopteryx is bordered all the way by 

 feathers, it will at once be seen that it could not leave behind a clean, 

 simple furrow, but a broad smudge composed of many lines, while the 

 tail of a lizard, progressing by hops and supporting itself on its hind- 

 limbs and tail, would produce just such an impression. 



There is yet another interesting group of extinct forms to which we 

 would refer shortly, termed " winged reptiles, or flying dragons." In 

 the Woodwardian Museum, at Cambridge, there is a large collection of 

 these bones, belonging to many species, from the soft marl in the 

 neighborhood of that town, about which there have been entertained 

 the most diverse opinions by the most eminent naturalists. They have 

 been variously held to belong to bats, to forms between birds and mam- 

 mals, to reptiles, and even to dolphins. Prof. Huxley finds in them 

 great resemblances to birds; Prof. Owen thinks that they are reptilian 

 remains ; while Prof. Seeley, judging from the form of the cranium, is 



