56 NATURE STUDIES. 



that of a true perching bird, but from the fanwise 

 and rounded arrangement of the wing- feathers, it 

 would appear to have been a bird of feeble flight/' 



Without entering further into the peculiarities of 

 this creature, we note that while a few naturalists 

 were doubtful as to its being really a bird, the majority 

 were very confident that it was so. Professor Owen, 

 in particular, pointed out that in one respect in which 

 it differed most from modern birds it resembles the 

 embryonic bird. Its tail-bones diminished gradually 

 to the last, whereas in modern birds, the last vertebra 

 of the tail is almost always the largest. But, said 

 Owen, " All birds in their embryonic state exhibit the 

 caudal vertebra distinct, and in part of the series [of 

 embryonic changes] gradually decreasing in size to 

 the pointed end one." The two-fingered and free 

 condition of the wing-hand, that is of what corre- 

 sponds to the hand in the bird's fore-limbs (which 

 Owen pleasantly described as " the biunguiculate and 

 less confluent condition of the manus"), he did not 

 account for in the same way as a feature of an em- 

 bryonic bird ; but in some modern species the forward 

 wing-finger supports a claw, and the Screamer has 

 two claws. ^11 who at that time examined the fossil 

 agreed that in all probability the creature had a beak 

 like a bird. 



But Mr. John Evans noticed somewhat later (besides 

 a rounded mass which he took for part of the brain- 

 pan, with a cast of the brain) what he regarded as a 

 fossil jaw, on the slab on which lies the fossil body of 



