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On the Occurrence of a Fossil Bird in the Chalk-Slate of the 

 Canton Glarus. By M. Hermann v. Meyer. 



The Ornithichnites made known by Hitchcock in North Ame- 

 rica, can afford no proof of the occurrence of birds in rocks 

 antecedent to the tertiary period to me, who am a decided op- 

 ponent of the view, that the appearances presented by the older 

 sandstone formations, which have made so much noise at the 

 present day, and which undoubtedly deserve attention, have 

 been certainly produced by the footsteps of animals. There 

 is also, however, the fragment of bone from the Hastings-sand 

 of Tilgate forest, which has been examined by Owen, who has 

 declared it to be the tarso-metatarsal bone of a wader, resem- 

 bling a heron, on account of the bone presenting an oval spot, 

 denoting the articular surface or place of attachment of the pos- 

 terior or opposable toe, and of the indications of the longitu- 

 dinal ridges of bone, which, in the metatarsals of birds, afford 

 attachment to the aponeurotic thecae, that tie down the tendons 

 as they glide along the metatarsus of the toes.* But in this 

 bone the actual lower extremity of the bone is awanting, and 

 the other bones found along with it seem to have belonged to 

 a Pterodactylus, rather than to birds, although they have been 

 referred to the latter. Besides these bones, there is preserved 

 in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 

 delphia, a fragment of bone found by Mr S. W. Conrad, near 

 Arneytown, New Jersey, in a friable green marl, considered 

 as belonging to the greensand formation by Mr Morton, and 

 which is regarded by the latter as the tibia, but by Mr Har- 

 lan as the femur of a bird of the genus Scolopax.t But re- 

 specting this last bone, there are neither figures nor a particu- 

 lar description, by means of which the necessary comparison 

 can be made. 



Thus the important question as to the occurrence of the re- 



* Vide description and figure in the Geological Transactions, 2d series, 

 vol. V. part 1st, p. 176. 



t Vide Morton's Synopsis of the Organic Eemains of the Cretaceous group 

 of the United States, p. 32 ; and Harlan's Medical and Physical Researches, 

 p. 280. 



