76 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



respectively. A few of the more salient points submitted in these papers may be 

 appropriately reproduced in these pages. 



Attention was more particularly directed in the foregoing communications to 

 the singular bird-like aspect presented by Chlamydosaurus when running erect, as 

 illustrated by the instantaneous photograph reproduced in Plate XII., fig. 5, wherein 

 the superficial resemblance to a running long-tailed bird, such as a pheasant, is 

 especially indicated. The writer's comments respecting this particular illustration 

 were as follows : 



Special interest is attachable to this avian-like ambulatory deportment of 

 Chlamydosaurus by reason of the generally accepted interpretation that the birds are 

 modified descendants of a reptilian archetype. The temptation is naturally also 

 very great to institute comparisons between, and to suggest possible affinities with, 

 this peculiar lizard and the extinct group of the Dinosauria, among whose 

 representatives a bipedal locomotive formula was apparently a characteristic feature. 

 A reference, however, to the skeleton of Chlamydosaurus does not encourage any 

 sanguine anticipations that may have been previously entertained in this direction. 

 It yields no indication of that peculiar avian modification of the pelvic elements, 

 adapted for bipedal locomotion, that are so essentially diagnostic of the more typical 

 Dinosauria, while in all general points it is indistinguishable from that of the 

 ordinary Agamidai. 



Though, as a consequence, no serious attempt would be justified to correlate 

 the erectly progressional Chlamydosaurus with such ponderous specialised Dinosaurs 

 as, say, Iguanodon or Brontosaurus, there are some few species at the lacertilian end 

 of the chain that probably presented, when living, a by no means remote likeness to 

 this existing type in both aspect and gait. The Compsognathus longipes of A. Wagner, 

 from the lithographic stones of Solenhofen, is more especially worthy of mention in 

 this connection. In size, some three feet long only, and in the proportions of the 

 limbs and other points, it must have been almost a counterpart of Chlamydosaurus 

 Kwgi. It is particularly noteworthy of it, moreover, that, as pointed out by the late 

 Prof. Huxley ("Anatomy of Vertebrata," p. 262, Ed. 1871), the pelvic elements of 

 Compsognathus correspond more essentially with those of the ordinary lizards than 

 with those of the aviform Dinosauria, the pubes in particular being apparently 

 directed forwards and downwards, like those of lizards. This type, as likewise 

 Stenopelyx, is also referred to by the same authority (p. 263) as indicating that 

 the more typical modification of the pelvis, in which the pubes are directed 



