III. 

 The Wing of Archaeopteryx/ 



Part I. 



ARCHiEOPTERYX, as is well-known, is the oldest bird hitherto 

 discovered, and forms one of the most interesting and remark- 

 able fossils from many points of view. Thus far, only two examples 

 are known, one being in the British Museum, the other in the 

 Natural History Museum of Berlin. Both were obtained from the 

 Solenhofen Slate (Lower Kimmeridgian) of Eichstadt, in Bavaria, 

 though an interval of some years intervened betAveen the discovery of 

 the two fossils. For the present we are concerned with the wing only 

 of the bird, and since this organ has been most wonderfully preserved 

 in the Berlin example, all that I have to say in the first half of my 

 paper will have reference to the second specimen. 



Readers of Natural Science will remember that Dr. Hurst 

 contributed to the pages of this Journal for October, 1893, an essay 

 entitled " The Digits in a Bird's Wing : A Study in the Origin and 

 Multiplication of Errors." He chose, as a case in point, the wing of 

 Archaeopteryx, and it would seem that his choice was an unfortunate 

 one. The object of the present paper is to try and show that the 

 result of that essay was but to contribute another to the already vast 

 pile of errors Dr. Hurst had set himself to undermine. At the time 

 this paper was read we met, so to speak, on equal terms, inasmuch as 

 neither of us had ever seen the actual specimen. Since then, how- 

 ever, Dr. Hurst has made a pilgrimage to the Berlin Museum, and, 

 therefore, has had the advantage of examining the fossil itself. My 

 own information has been obtained from a study of photographs and 

 the literature of the subject ; while my investigations have been 

 carried on in the Department of Comparative Anatomy of the 

 University Museum, Oxford, and were undertaken at the instance of 

 Professor E. Ray Lankester, who desired me to make a model of the 

 wing, to be exhibited in the museum. This has now been done, and 

 I should like here to record my grateful thanks for kind help and 

 advice during the work of restoration. 



In devoting the whole of the first part of the paper to a dis- 

 cussion of the wing itself, I trust I shall not seem to be wasting 



1 Read at the British Association, Oxford, 1894. 



