618 BRITISH FOSSIL REPTILES. 



Every bone in the Bird was antecedently present in the framework of the Pterodactyle j 

 the resemblance of that portion directly subservient to flight is closer in the naked flyer to 

 that in the feathered flyer than it is to the fore-limb of the terrestrial or aquatic Reptile. No 

 Dinosaur has the caudal vertebrae reduced as in Birds ; many Pterodactyles manifist that 

 significant resemblance. But some Pterodactyles had long tails and all had toothed jaws. 

 A bird of the oolitic period * combined a long tail of many vertebrae with true avian wings, 

 and it may have had teeth in its mandibles. It is certain that a later extinct bird.f though 

 of an early tertiary period, far back in time beyond the present reign of birds, had tooth- 

 like processes of the alveolar borders of both upper and lower jaws. 



Fact by fact, as they slowly and successively drop in, testify in favour of the coming 

 in of species by ' nomogeny,' and speak as strongly against ' thaumatogeny ' J or the 

 multiplication of miracle on the alternative hypothesis of the writer of ' Little Lectures on 

 Great Things.' He and his school invoke a cataclysm to extinguish the Palgeothere, and 

 an inconceivable operation to convert dust into the Hippothere ; yet a slight disproportion 

 of the outer and inner of the three hoofed toes of each foot of these quadrupeds is their 

 main diff'erence. jMy critic again invokes a cataclysm to extinguish the race of 

 Hippotherian species and again requires the miracle to create the Horse. Yet the loss 

 of the small side-hoofs that dangled behind the main mid-hoof in the Hippothere is the 

 chief organic distinction between liippotherium and Hippos. Every bone, every tooth, 

 present in the eocene and miocene predecessors of modern Horses is retained in them, 

 with slight changes of shape and proportion. The second and fourth metacarpals which 

 bore hoofed dioits of moderate size in eocene davs, bore them of diminutive size in miocene 

 days ; and now, when such dangling spurious hoofs are gone, their metacarpal and meta- 

 tarsal suspensories still remain, hidden beneath the skin, and ending in a point where, of 

 old, was a well-turned joint. 



It has become as impossible to square the hypothesis of " the peopling of the globe 

 during the long reign of life thereon, by successive and s])ecial creations " with the known 

 vital phenomena, as it was impossible to explain the sum of astronomical facts, 

 accumulated in the fourteenth century, by the cumbrous machinery of cycles and epicycles, 

 necessitated under the assumption of the globe as the fixed, central, and largest body of 

 the Universe. Biology seems now to be at the Copernicau stage ; and if the rejection of 

 the incoming of species by primary creative acts should exercise an influence on the pro- 

 gress of that science akin to that of astronomy after the abandonment of the faith in the 

 earth's fixity, Biologists may confidently look for as rapid a progress through acceptance 

 of Nomogeny. 



What, then, may be the meaning of the reduction of bulk in the fore-limbs of certain 

 Dinosaurs ? Does that reduction indicate a step in the conversion of such Reptiles into 



* Archeopteryx, ' Pliilosopliical Transactions,' 18fi3. 



t Odou/opferi/.r, ' Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,' 1873. 



X 'Anatomy of Vertebrates,' 8vo, vol. iii, p. 81-1. 



