xi. FOSSIL BIRDS. 229 



affinity and ornithic analogy seem to be sufficiently indicated by 

 these brief remarks n . 



FOSSIL BIRDS. 



When first the long hollow bones of the pterodactyles of Stones- 

 field attracted attention, they were naturally referred to birds ; 

 since they have been more carefully studied, it is rare to meet with 

 notices of any bones found at Stonesfield which were supposed to 

 possess avian characters. The Rev. J. B. P. Dennis published some 

 remarks on the 'Existence of Remains of Birds' in this deposit, 

 founded on a specimen in the possession of W. Adams, Esq., of 

 Buriton, near Peter sfield . This bone, when examined micro- 

 scopically, presented rather close resemblance to the structure of 

 the humerus of a heron, specially in the lacuna? and small canaliculi 

 leading from them. 



In the absence of evidence, palaeontologists of cautious habits 

 of thought will not venture to affirm or deny the existence of birds 

 at the epoch of time or in the region of the earth for which the 

 lagoon of Stonesfield became a rich museum. They will not affirm 

 it, either on the ground of the proved analogy of the rhampho- 

 rhynchus with the bird, leading to the expectation that the groups 

 were contemporaneous; nor on the ground of a necessary succes- 

 sion in the several classes of animals, rising always upwards, so 

 that as mammalia have been certainly found at Stonesfield in the 

 oolite, and in some other localities in the rhaetic beds, birds must 

 have come into being ; still less will he risk the existence of birds 

 on the vague dream that all the known classes of animals co-existed 

 through all mesozoic if not all ancient time, though some have left 

 no remains to confirm their claim of a long family history. Yet 

 he will not hastily deny that birds may have been flying over the 

 water or perching among the trees in the period when so great a 

 number of plants and insects occupied the land, and so great a 

 variety of oceanic life prevailed. Rare, it is probable, at the present 

 day would be the reliquiae of birds in the sea ; perhaps we might 

 be justified rather in looking for them in lacustrine deposits than 



n Consult for extended discussions on the question of the ornithic affinity of 

 pterodactylians generally, Cuvier, Ossemens fossiles, v. plate r i ; Professor Owen, in 

 Pal. Soc. Mem. for 1857 ; and Mr. Seeley on Ornithosauria, 1870. 



Microscopical Journal, 1857, p. 63. 



