MR. J. EVANS ON THE AECH^OPTERYX. 421 



" is the jaw. Teeth of this sort I do not know in the lithographic 

 " stone. There exists no similarity between them and the teeth of 

 " Pterodactyles. The nearest likeness is to the teeth of my family of 

 " Acrosaurus, namely, to the Acrosaurus Frischnanni, Meyer (Eepti- 

 " lien des. lithog. Schiefers, p. 116, t. 12, f. 7-8) from the lithographic 

 " slate of Bavaria, in which however the crown is lower and longer 

 *' from back to front. In Fleurosaurus Meyeri (Pal. x. p. 37, t. 7.) 

 " which belongs to the same family, the teeth possess less likeness. 

 " One might also be reminded of the teeth of the Oeosaurus Soem- 

 " meringi, Meyer. (Dentsch. Akad. Munich, 1816, p. 36. Cuvier, 

 "Oss. foss. PL 249, fig. 2 — 6) which however are much longer. 

 " Prom this it would appear that the jaw really belongs to the 

 " ArchsDopteryx. An arming of the jaw with teeth would contradict 

 " the view of the Archseopteryx being a bird or an embryonic form of 

 *' bird. But after all, I do not beheve that God formed his creatures 

 " after the systems devised by our philosophical wisdom. Of the 

 " classes of birds and reptiles as we define them, the Creator knows 

 " nothing, and just as little of a prototype, or of a constant embry- 

 " onic condition of the bird, which might be recognized in the 

 " Archseopteryx. The Archseopteryx is of its kind just as perfect a 

 *' creature as other creatures, and if we are not able to include this 

 " fossil animal in our system, our short-sightedness is alone to 

 " blame." 



It will, of course, be observed that this opinion of Von Meyer is 

 founded on my drawings alone, and is therefore of course subject to 

 a revision on an examination of the slab itself. But there certainly 

 appears to be a case made out for careful investigation by those more 

 competent than I am to form an opinion in such a case. Its extreme 

 importance as bearing upon the great question of the Origin of 

 Species must be evident to all, and I for one can see no reason why 

 a creature presenting so manj' anomalies as the Archseopteryx, all of 

 which however tend to link together the two great classes of Birds 

 and Eeptiles, should not also have been endowed with teeth, either in 

 lieu of, or combiaed with a beak, in the same manner as in the Bham- 

 phorhynchus with which it exhibits other affinities. The tooth-like 

 serrations in the beaks of many birds — and notably in the Merganser 

 Serrator, where they closely approach in character to real teeth 

 though connected only with the horny covering and not with the 

 bones of the mandible, — are sufficient to prove that the presence of 

 feathers does not of necessity imply that the beak with which to 

 preen them should be edentulous. 



