324 Mr. H. Seeley on the Avian Affinities of Pterodactyles. 
prismatiques comme celles des oiseaux a long cou, et une plus 
petite se montre a chaque extrémité.” This adds nothing to 
the evidence for its assumed reptilian character. 
“Ce qui est le plus fait pour etonner, c’est que cette longue 
téte et ce long cou soient portés sur un si petit corps; les 
oiseaux seuls offrent de semblable proportions, et sans doute 
e’est, avec la longueur du grand doigt, ce qui avoit determiné 
quelques naturalistes & rapporter notre animal a cette classe.” 
Nor can this be taken as evidence that the animal was a reptile. 
And in many other minor matters Cuvier is careful to show how 
their modifications resemble those. of birds; and when this is 
not so, birds are the only animals from which he finds them vary- 
ing. And the few suggestions which are thrown out respecting 
affinities to lizards are upon points which are also common to 
birds. Thus what Cuvier did was to distinguish these animals 
from birds, and incidentally to show that their organization was 
only a modification of that of the avian class. And the legiti- 
mate inference from this would have been that their systematic 
place was that of a new group of birds, and not that they were 
reptiles. 
None of the long list of writers reviewed or cited by the 
learned author of the ‘ Fauna der Vorwelt’ appear to have ad- 
duced anything of importance in favour of the presumed rep- 
tilian relations of Pterodactyles. And what Professor Owen has 
incidentally stated in his descriptions would go far towards de- 
monstrating them to be bird-allies, while he, no more than 
preceding or succeeding writers, has pointed out any characters 
which would justify the position that has been assigned to them 
in the reptilian class. In a case like this it may be remembered 
to Prof. Owen’s honour that he described certain fragments of 
bones of Pterodactyle as those of birds, and never allowed that 
the determination was erroneous, as many maintained. 
Seeing, then, that Pterodactyles have hitherto been placed 
with reptiles, on Cuvier’s dictum, and on the trivial data which 
I have quoted that their nature might be apparent, I believe it 
will be readily conceded that the proofs that Pterodactyles are 
reptiles have yet to be found. 
In determining and arranging the osteological remains which 
adorn the collections of the Woodwardian Museum, I was struck 
with the almost invariably ornithic characters of the bones of 
Pterodactyles, and was led to the conclusion that, as the prin- 
ciple of organization was avian, and the bones were nearly all 
avian in their modifications, the animal must have been avian. 
And comparative diagrams of the corresponding parts of Ptero- 
dactyles and birds were exhibited to prove it when, in 1864, I 
read a paper on the Pterodactyle as evidence of a new subclass 
