206 EXTINCT MONSTERS 
It was bought, by telegram, for Professor Marsh, and so secured 
for the Yale College Museum; but a cast may be seen at South 
Kensington. 
Any one who looks carefully at the beautiful impressions of 
the wings of this specimen can see that they must have been 
produced by a thin smooth membrane, very similar to that of 
bats. When this elegant little creature was covered up by the 
fine soft mud that now forms the lithographic stone, its wings 
were partly folded, so that the membranes were more or less 
contracted into folds, like an umbrella only partly open. These 
Fic. 75.—Skeleton of Rhamphorhynchus phyllurus, with delicate impressions of 
the flying membranes. (After Marsh.) 
appear to have been attached all along the arm and to the end of 
the long finger. They then made a graceful curve backward to 
the hind foot, and probably were continued beyond the latter so 
as to join the tail. With its graceful pointed wings and long 
tail, this little flying saurian must have been a beautiful object, 
as it slowly mounted upwards from some cliff overlooking the 
Jurassic seas. (See Plate XXXII.) 
Like those already described, it was provided with three short- 
clawed fingers, as well as the one which mainly supported its 
