18 Secondary Fossils. 



among several bones of Pterodactyls from Stonesfield he had 

 met with one from the same locality which by its microscopic 

 structure was clearly referable to a bird, I proposed to Mr 

 Quekett of the College of Surgeons to examine the fossils of 

 the same class in the Society's Museum, a task which he 

 kindly undertook. He reports to me that all the bones, more 

 than twenty in number, are those of birds, except two which 

 belong to Pterodactyls and are characterized by that minute 

 structure which Mr Bowerbank found, in 1847, in the Ptero- 

 dactyls of the chalk. The Wealden fossil which Cuvier and 

 Mantell once referred to a wading bird seems to be referable 

 to a Pterodactyl, for reasons pointed out by Prof. Owen. But 

 Dr Mantell is still of opinion, that he had in his collection 

 from the Wealden a portion of the ulna of a bird on which 

 there was a distinct row of slight eminences, like the tuber- 

 cles on the ulna of some birds, for the attachment of the 

 large wing-feathers. This specimen has been transferred to 

 the British Museum, and well deserves to be sought for and 

 figured. 



The Protornis Glariensis of H. von Meyer, found in the 

 slates of Glaris in Switzerland, was formerly cited as an ex- 

 ample of a cretaceous bird. But according to the classifica- 

 tion of the Alpine strata lately proposed by Sir Roderick 

 Murchison, you will observe that this schist is about the age 

 of the nummulitic limestone, and therefore an eocene rock*. 



The long-winged bird of the chalk, called Cimoliornis by 

 Prof. Owen, formerly considered as allied to the albatros, 

 has now proved, as Mr Bowerbank had inferred from the 

 structure and proportions of the bone-cells, to be a Ptero- 

 dactyl, the jaws, skull, and wing-bones of three species of 

 these flying reptile s having been found in the white chalk 

 without flints, above the chalk marl in Kent. Mr Bower- 

 bank estimates the largest of these species, judging from the 

 size of the bones as compared to corresponding portions of 

 Pterodactyls, of which we have the more or less perfect ske- 

 letons, to have been so gigantic that it measured 16 feet 6 

 inches from tip to tip of the outstretched wings t- 



* Quart. Journ, Geol. Soc, vol. v., p. 199. 

 t Zool. Proceedings, Jan. 14, 1851. 



