60 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



The restoration which Mr. Gleeson has drawn differs 

 radically from any yet made, and is the result of a 

 careful study of the specimen belonging to the United 

 States National Museum. No one can appreciate 

 the peculiarities of Hesperornis and its remarkable 

 departures from other swimming birds who has not seen 

 the skeleton mounted in a swimming attitude. The 

 great length of the legs, their position at the middle of 

 the body, the narrowness of the body back of the hip 

 joint, and the disproportionate length of the outer toe 

 are all brought out in a manner which a picture of the bird 

 squatting upon its haunches fails utterly to show. As 

 for the tail, it is evident from the size and breadth of 

 the bones that something of the kind was present; it 

 is also evident that it was not like that of an ordinary 

 bird, and so it has been drawn with just a suggestion of 

 Archaeopteryx about it. 



The most extraordinary thing about Hesperornis, 

 however, is the position of the legs relative to the body, 

 and this is something that was not even suspected until 

 the skeleton was mounted in a swimming attitude. As 

 anyone knows who has watched a duck swim, the usual 

 place for the feet and legs is beneath and in a line with 

 the body. But in our great extinct diver the articula- 

 tions of the leg bones are such that this is impossible, 

 and the feet and lower joint of the legs (called the 

 tarsus) must have stood out nearly at right angles to 

 the body, like a pair of oars. This is so peculiar and 

 anomalous an attitude for a bird's legs that, although 

 apparently indicated by the shape of the bones, it was 

 at first thought to be due to the crushing and con- 

 sequent distortion to which the bones had been sub- 

 jected, and an endeavor was made to place the legs 

 in the ordinary position, even though this was done at 

 the expense of some little dislocation of the joints. But 



