IV. 



The Structure and Habits of Archseopteryx. 



I. — An Explanation. 



WHEN in Berlin during the past summer, I learned with deep regret 

 that my words in an article in this Journal (October, 1893) had 

 been interpreted as an accusation of deliberate falsehood against 

 certain distinguished palaeontologists, and on reading isolated sentences 

 in that article I am bound to admit that they are open to such a 

 construction if the reader chooses to ignore the whole tenour of the 

 article. The object of the article was to show how errors arise and 

 are multiplied, and I attempted to show that it was possible for the 

 most distinguished men to fall into error when their minds were not 

 entirely free from an unconscious bias. Under the influence of such 

 a bias or dominant idea, alterations are deliberately made in drawings 

 or descriptions in such way as to remove what appears under the 

 influence of such a bias to be misleading. I need not here repeat my 

 argument to show that the figure which I described as "spreading like 

 a plague " had been altered deliberately in order to remove an apparent 

 absurdity ; or, in other words, to show that the errors in that figure 

 are not such as are made by a professional woodcutter and passed 

 over undetected by an author. That the figure was thereby rendered 

 altogether false and misleading, I asked my readers to prove for them- 

 selves by comparing it with the photograph with which the article was 

 illustrated. 



I cannot now do less than express to Professors Steinmann and 

 Doderlein my sincere regret that such an unfortunate interpretation 

 has been put upon isolated sentences in my article, and assure them 

 I aimed only at showing that they, with the most honest intentions, had 

 so manipulated a drawing as to make it worthless and misleading, 

 and that in this they had only fallen into an error to which we are 

 all alike liable. In spite of what certain English correspondents have 

 written to more than one German professor on the subject, I deny 

 altogether that I have made any charge of dishonesty against any 

 person whatever. The paragraph commencing near the bottom of 

 p. 280 shows my meaning so clearly that I am astonished that 

 anybody should put a wrong interpretation upon it, or at least that 

 any Englishman should. 



