Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^-c. 695 



of some mistake having occurred as to the beds from which 

 the fossil was originally obtained, and suggested that the 

 specimen, which much resembled the Stone-field fossils both 

 in the appearance of the bone and in the matrix, might have 

 been accidentally included with true Stonesfield remains under 

 a common number in the British Museum. He also called 

 attention to the fact that the occurrence of a bird allied to 

 recent forms in Jurassic beds would involve a complete 

 change in all the accepted ideas of evolution. Professor 

 Seeley admitted that the matrix of the new fossil differed 

 slightly from that of other Stonesfield specimens, but gave 

 reasons for believing that all the specimens from the Earl of 

 Enniskillen's collection had been obtained from Stonesfield. 



The results of further enquiry into the matter have been 

 communicated to me by Dr. Andrews, by whose permission 

 1 add the following extract from a letter of his : — 



'' Since the paper was read, I and several others have very 

 carefully examined the specimen and the matrix, and I think 

 it may be said to be absolutely certain that the bone is the 

 humerus of a species of Pala:lodus. Probably it is P. am- 

 biyuus, an extremely common species, of which we possess 

 several humeri identical in structure with Prof. Seeley's 

 fossil. This species is described by Milne-Edwards in his 

 ' Oiseaux fossiles de la France,^ vol. ii. p. 60 ; it is a 

 generalized Flamingo, exactly as Prof. Seeley has stated his 

 fossil was. The matrix is the ordinary freshwater limestone 

 of the Puy-de-D6me, of Oligocene (Aquitanian) age. It has 

 much superficial resemblance to some beds of the Stonesfield 

 Slate. We have a number of undoubtedly Oligocene bones 

 from Central France in a similar matrix ; in fact we have a 

 humerus of the same species in almost the same rock.'^ 



I think this extract is sufficiently important to justify my 

 calling the attention of ornithologists to it. It will be seen 

 that as regards the affinities of the fossil, on which Professor 

 Seeley's opinion has the weight of an authority, his views 

 have been fully confirmed, but that he has been misled by 

 the specimen having been, by some accident, associated with 

 fossils from another localitv. I should add that onlv a short 



