444 NATURAL SCIENCE. Dec. 



that we may see the matter from Dr, Hurst's point of view, and thus 

 enable ourselves to understand maybe the conclusion which he has 

 arrived at, let us examine a few passages culled at random from his 

 paper. 



" The photograph accompanying this essay [reprinted on p. 351] 

 shows the primary quills to have been supported by none of the first 

 three digits, and justifies, if it does not even prove, the view that 

 those quills were supported by the digits IV and V (or one of them). 

 Portions of these large digits were figured by Owen thirty years ago, 

 and they are seen in the London specimen and are quite unlike any- 

 thing seen on the surface of the Berlin specimen, in which these digits 

 probably still lie hidden." 



Again : " If the dissected wing of a common bird ... be com- 

 pared with the plate of Aychaopteryx, the conclusion that those two 

 wings are essentially alike will be inevitable. It will be impossible to 

 avoid the conclusion that the two digits which support the quills of 

 the ordinary bird existed also in Avchaopteyyx, and their position will 

 be seen to be indicated faintly in the photograph by a shadow which 

 runs parallel with and behind the slender digits. The carpal angle 

 of the wing will be seen in front of the carpal ends of the slender 

 fingers, and from this point the outline of the anterior margin of the 

 wing can be traced to the tip. This margin lies under those fingers. 

 Not only did these, as their form and structure show, not support 

 the quills, but they did not even contribute to the support of them. 

 These fingers lie not in the wing at all, but upon its feathev-clad 

 surface. Those slender fingers, like the free fingers of the 

 Ptevodactyla, or of the recent ' flying ' phalangers and squirrels, or 

 of Galeopithecus, or like the pollex of a bat, are admirably adapted 

 for climbing in trees. They proclaim Archaoptevyx to have been a 

 winged quadruped, . . . " 



" Dames . . . states that the primary quills . . . were 

 attached to the longest finger (II). If . . . we consider what 

 would be the result of such an attachment, it must be obvious that 

 it would be twofold. Firstly, the attachment of such a series of 

 quills would render the fingers perfectly useless for climbing, and 

 secondly, a single flap of that wing would twist the phalanges off" at the 

 joints." 



Now as touching Owen's restoration. I have already pointed 

 it out as more than likely that the phalanges Owen marked as digit I. ? 

 were really none other than the ungual and penultimate phalanges 

 of digit II. Supposing this to be the case, it will be seen that the 

 wing of both London and Berlin specimens are precisely similar. 



We may therefore assume that the remiges in both fossils would 

 have been attached in the same manner. If it can be proved then, so far 

 as proof is possible, that these digits could have supported the remiges, 

 we shall have gone a great way towards demolishing, or at any rate 

 rendering pointless, Hurst's elaborate hypothesis. I feel convinced 



