April 1, 1890.1 



KNOWLEDGE. 



109 



genous classes, and some effort has been made to group 



plants of medicinal valne ; wliile fibres and economic 

 vegetable products are in the museum. 



FLYING DRAGONS. 



By E Lydekker, B.A.Cantab. 



LEGENDS of Flying Dragons were rife both among 

 tlie ancients and also during the middle ages, but it 

 was reserved for the great founder of the science of 

 comparative anatomy — the illustrious Cuvier — to 

 show that such creatures had really once existed,and 

 were not merely the dreams of the poet and the herald. 

 Thus in the year 1784 one Collini described the skeleton 

 of an animal found in the fine-grained limestones of 

 Bavaria, so extensively quarried for the use of the litho- 

 grapher, which he regarded as indicating an unknown 

 marine animal. When, however, this curious specimen 

 came into the hands of Cu\'ier, about the year 1809, he at 

 once recognised it as the remains of a reptile endowed with 

 the power of fiight, for which he proposed the name of 

 Pterodactyle ; the name bemg compounded from the Greek 

 words for a whig and a finger. In thus proving, once for 

 all, the former existence of veritable Flying Dragons it 

 must not, however, be supposed that Cuvier thereby 

 authenticated the old legends which represented these 

 creatures as capturing human beings, and being them- 

 selves in turn destroyed by valiant champions. These 

 real Flying Dragons, on the contrary, existed long ages 

 before man or any of the higher types of mammals had 

 made their apptiiiancc on the globe; being, uideed, 

 characteristic of the sd-culled Secondary epoch of the geolo- 

 gists, the relations (if which to the present epoch we have 

 endeavoured to indicate in the article on Fish Lizards 

 which appeared in Knowledoe for November last. 



Piefore the master mind of Cuvier indicated the true 

 attiiiitics of the original specimen of the Ptei'odactyle, one 

 luituralist had regarded it as a bird, and another as a bat, 

 and it will therefore be interesting to glance at the chief 

 features in the bony anatomy of these creatures, to see how 

 the great anatomist was justified in his conclusions. For 

 tliis purpose we give a figure in the accompanying wood- 

 cut of the skeleton of a small Pterodactyle olitained from 

 the Litliographic limestones of Bavaria, and remarkable 

 for its beautiful state of preservation. It will be seen 

 from this figure that the neck of these creatures is 

 comparatively short, and has but few joints, or vertebra*, 

 in wliicli respect it is unlike that of a hird. The skull is, 

 however, wonderfully bird-like in the figured specimen, 

 although in some species it is much shorter and more 

 lizard-like. There are, however, certain features in the 

 structuri' of the skull, into the consideration of which it 

 would be diflicult to enter in the present article, by which 

 it is at once distinguished from the skull of a bird. The 

 presence of a number of sharply pointed teeth (shown in 

 l-'ig. 2) was, indeed, at one period regarded as another 

 ])oint in wliich Ptcrodactyles difi'ered from birds ; but it 

 has bei'U subsequently found that many if not all the birds 

 of tlu' Secondary epoch were provided with teeth, while in 

 some Ptcrodactyles those organs w^ere wanting, as shown 

 in Fig. 8. The most ready means of distinguishing a 

 Pterodactyle from a bird is, however, to be found in the 

 structure of the fore-limb. Thus it will be seen from Fig. 1 

 that the " hand " of a Pterodactyle carries three fingers 

 furnished with claws, and a fourth extremely elongated 

 finger which has no terminal claw, and supports tlie mem- 

 branous wings. It is, on the whole probable that tliis 

 elongated finger corresponds to the little finger of the 



human hand, the thumb being probably represented by 

 the small splint-like bone seen at the wrist in Fig. 1 ; and 

 in any case the finger in question is the outermost one, 

 whether it correspond to the ring-finger or the little finger 

 of the human hand. Now in the whig of a bird, on the 

 contrary, neither of the bones corresponding to the fingers 

 are greatly elongated, wliile the longest of these modified 

 fingers is the one representing the index or fore-finger of 

 the human hand, and is, therefore, the very opposite of 

 the elongated finger of the Flying Dragons. This essential 

 difference between the structure of the wing of a Ptero- 

 dactyle and that of a bird is of such radical importance as 



Fig. 1. — The Skeleton of a Small Pterodactvle, fro.m thk 

 LiTiiouuAPUic Limestones of Bavakia. The ore.ituie is Iviuj; on 

 its Kick, with the head bent to the left .side, a indicate.<i the left 

 pubic bone; the haunch bone, or ilium, being showu on the opposite 

 side. (After Von Meyer.) 



to indicate that the Flying Dragons could not possibly 

 have been the ancestors of birds ; which (always assum- 

 ing that we are right in regarding evolution as the true 

 explanation of the mutual relation of tlie different groups 

 of animals) were more i)robably descended from those extra- 

 ordinary extinct reptiles commonly known as Dinosaurs. 



The shield-like bone seen in Fig. 1, lying in the middle 

 of the chest in front of the back-bone, corresponds to the 

 breast-bone of a bird, and, like that of the majority of birds, 

 has a keel projecting in front for tlie support of the strong 

 muscles of the breast necessary to move the wing in fiight. 

 This remarkable similarity between the breast-bone of a 

 Pterodactyle and that of a bird is a good instance of what 

 comparative anatomists term an adaptive resemblance : 

 that is, a resemblance caused by the cireumstiince that a 

 particular organ or bone has to subserve the same pur- 

 pose ill two particular instances. It will further be 

 observed from the iigure that the slu'leton of the Ptero- 

 dactyle differs from that of an ordinary bird by the absence 

 of the so-called •■ merrv-thonght " or furculum. Since, 



