INTRODUCTION 8i 



hands. The great fault of his series of memoirs, if it may be allowed the 

 present writer to criticize them, is the indifference of their author to for- 

 mulating his views, so as to enable the ordinary taxonomer to perceive 

 how far he has got, if not to present him with a fair scheme. But this 

 fault is possibly one of those that are " to merit near allied," since it 

 would seem to spring from the author's hesitation to pass from observation 

 to theory, for to theory at present belong, and must for some time belong, 

 all attempts at Classification. Still it is not the less annoying and dis- 

 appointing to the systematist to find that the man whose life-long 

 application would have enabled him, better than any one else, to declare 

 the effect of the alliances and differences shewn to exist among 

 various members of the Class, should yet have been so reticent, or that 

 when he spoke he should rather use the language of Morphology, which 

 those who are not morphologists find difficult of correct interpretation, 

 and wholly inadequate to allow of zoological deductions.^ 



For some time past rumours of a discovery of the highest interest had 

 been agitating the minds of zoologists, for in 1861 Andreas Wagner had 

 sent to the Academy of Sciences of Munich {Sitzu7igsber. pp. 146-154 ; 

 Ann. Nat. Hist. ser. 3, ix. pp. 261-267) an account of what he conceived 

 to be a feathered Reptile (assigning to it the name Griphosaurus), the 

 remains of which had been found in the lithographic beds of Solenhofen ; 

 but he himself, through failing health, had been unable to see the fossil. 

 In 1862 the slabs containing the remains were acquired by the British 

 Museum, and towards the end of that year Owen communicated a detailed 

 description of them to the Royal Society (Philos. Trans. 1863, pp. 33-47), 

 proving their Bird-like nature, and referring them to the genus Archseopteryx 

 of Hermann von Meyer, hitherto known only by the impression of a 

 single feather from the same geological beds. Wagner foresaw the use 

 that would be made of this discovery by the adherents of the new 

 Philosophy, and, in the usual language of its opponents at the time, 

 strove to ward off the " misinterpretations " that they would put upon it. 

 His protest, it is needless to say, was unavailing, and all who respect his 

 memory must regret that the sunset of life failed to give him that insight 

 into the future which is poetically ascribed to it. To Darwin and those 

 who believed with him scarcely any discovery could have been more 

 welcome ; but that is beside our present business. It was quickly seen 

 — even by those who held Archxopteryx to be a Reptile — that it was a 

 form intermediate between existing Birds and existing Rej^tiles — while 

 those who were convinced by Owen's researches of its ornithic afiinity saw 

 that it must belong to a type of Birds w'holly unknown before, and one 

 that in any future arrangement of the Class must have a special rank 

 reserved for it.^ It is elsewhere briefly described and figured in this 

 work (Fossil Birds, pages 278-280).^ 



^ As au instance, take the passages in wliich Tur7iix and Thinocorys are apparently 

 referred ( Trans. Zool. Soc. ix. pp. 291 et seqq. ; and Encycl. Brit. ed. 9, iii. p. 700) to 

 the jEgitlwgnathae, a view which, as she'mi by the author {Trans, x. p. 310), is not 

 that really intended by him. 



^ This was done in 1866 by Prof. Hackel, who {Gen. Morphol. ii. pp. xi., cxxxix.- 

 cxli.) proposed the name SAURlURiE for the group containing it. 



^ It behoves us to mention the ' Outlines of a Systematic Keview of the Class of 



