58 NATURE STUDIES. 



was written that a jaw armed with teeth could belong 

 to a creature manifestly bird-like, that many supposed 

 the jaw belonged to some fish, though the jaws and 

 teeth of fossil fishes from the same bed were found to 

 be unlike this. Hermann von Meyer, referring to 

 the drawings sent to him by Mr. Woodward, said 

 that he knew of no teeth of the kind in the litho- 

 graphic stone ; nor were the teeth like those of Ptero- 

 dactyles (the great reptiles with bat-like wings) . ' ' An 

 -arming of the jaw with teeth would contradict the 

 view of the Archgeopteryx being a bird or an em- 

 bryonic 1 form of bird. But, after all," he proceeds, 

 <e I do not believe that God formed his creatures after 

 the systems devised by our philosophical wisdom. Of 

 the classes of birds and reptiles, as we define them, 

 the Creator knows nothing, and just as little of a 

 prototype or of a constant embryonic condition of the 

 bird which might be recognised in the Archseopteryx. 

 The Archseopteryx is, of its kind, just as perfect as 

 other creatures, and if we are not able to include this 

 fossil animal in our system, our shortsightedness is 

 .alone to blame." 



Probably the theory that the Archeeopteryx had 

 teeth would still be regarded as little better than an 



1 The word embryonic is here used with reference to the species, 

 not to the individual. It signifies a form which creatures of the 

 species presented before the type of the species had become, us 

 it were, distinct and established. Traces of such past forms of a 

 species are recognisable in the embryonic development of later 

 representatives of the species. 



