FOSSIL DIRDS. 239 



extensively worked for phosphate of lime extracted from coprolite nodules. Portions of the metacarpus, 

 metatarsus, tibia, and femur have been detected and named by Professor Seeley Enaliornis (Pelagornis) 

 barretti Professor Newton believed them to be the remains of a true bird, having some resemblance 

 to a Penguin. These are the only bird-bones of Cretaceous age met with in England. 



Thanks, however, to the labours of Professor O. C. Marsh, of Yale College, Newhaven, Conn., 

 U.S.A., in the remarkable series of Cretaceous lacustrine deposits of the Atlantic coast and the region 

 of the Rocky Mountains, no fewer than thirteen species of bird-remains have been described by that 

 accomplished palaeontologist. The most important of these remains are no doubt the Odontornitkes, or 

 birds with teeth, the first of which, the Ichthyornis dispar, was described in 1872. This 

 remarkable bird was, though apparently aquatic in his habits, provided with well-developed wings, 

 constructed upon the usual typical plan of a bird. The jaws were furnished with compressed 

 pointed teeth, fixed in distinct sockets. The vertebrae were bi-concave a character unknown in 

 the entire class Aves, but common to certain reptiles, amphibia, and fishes. 



The other remarkable bird with teeth is the Hesperornis regalis, a gigantic diving bird, 

 wonderfully like an existing Diver, or Grebe, but standing between five and six feet high, also 

 from the Cretaceous foi*mations of Kansas. The teeth of this great bird were not implanted in 

 sockets, but in a deep groove extending the whole length of the mandible. The teeth have 

 pointed crowns, covered with enamel, and supported on stout fangs, like the teeth of Mosasauroid 

 reptiles. Externally, the jaw-bones appear to have been covered by a horny bill, as in modern 

 birds, and the extremity of the jaw was without teeth, and covered by a bill. The breast-bone 

 is destitute of a keel, and the wings are quite rudimentary. Its tail is not lizard-like, as in 

 Archceopteryx, but consists of about twelve vertebrae, of which the last three or four are amalga- 

 mated together to form a flat terminal bone. The tail seems to have been capable of up-aiid- 

 down movement in a vertical plane, thus probably fitting this organ to serve as a swimming- 

 paddle or rudder, and to aid it in diving. In one of his lectures Professor Huxley has spoken 

 of these large extinct species as follows : " They differ from all existing birds, and so far 

 resemble reptiles in the one important character that they are provided with teeth; and it is in 

 consequence of this discovery that we are obliged to modify the definition of the classes of birds 

 and reptiles. . . . Before the production of such creatures as these it might have been said 

 that a bird had such and such characteristics, among which was an absence of teeth, but the 

 discovery of a bird that had teeth shows at once that there were ancient birds which in that 

 particular respect approached reptiles more than any existing bird does." 



Another remarkable " Ornitholita," as these bird-remains are called, has been discovered 

 recently in the London Clay in the Isle of Sheppey, a marine deposit rich in relics, brought 

 probably from the neighbouring Eocene continent by some great river, whose embouchure was 

 not far distant. This deposit has already yielded remains of Halcyornis, a supposed fossil Kingfisher, 

 of Lithornis, a small Vulturine bird, of Dasornis, a Struthious bird of the size of the living Ostrich, of 

 a small wading-bird, and of a longipennate bird, with wings as large as those of an Albatross. The 

 fossil last found makes us acquainted with a strange saw-billed bird, probably a fish-eating one, like a 

 Merganser, but in which the bony serrations (for they are not true teeth) were of large size, and when 

 covered with a horny sheath mubt have been formidable organs of prehension. Professor Owen 

 named this remarkable bird Odontopleryx toliapicus. 



From the Eocene slate rocks of the Canton Glarus, the skeleton, almost entire, of a small Pas- 

 serine bird, of the size of a Lark, has been obtained, and from the gypsum quarries (Eocene) of Mont- 

 martre and Meudon, near Paris, several genera of birds have been described, such as the Cryptornis 

 and the Palwogithahis, whilst the Gypsornis is described as the giant of the family of Rails, being as 

 large as a Stork. Parts of more than one large fossil bird have been obtained from the Miocene 

 deposits of the Sewalik Hills of India, whilst Madagascar has yielded three species of jffpyornis, a 

 wingless bird, whose affinities are clearly with the great wingless and extinct Moas (Dinomis) of the 

 distant islands of New Zealand, once so abundant even within the period of occupation of those islands 

 by primitive races of mankind. It is quite consistent, however, with what we already know of per- 

 sistent types, to assume that the wingless birds (of which the Dlnornis, the ^Epyornis, the Apteryx, 

 the Emu, the Cassowary, the Rhea, and the Ostrich are representatives), have lived on from the Trias 



