16 



BRITISH BIRDS 



all the evidence at our disposal points to the view that the wing 

 has become gradually moulded into an organ of flight, from a con- 

 dition in which it played a different part. The earliest bird of which 

 we have any record had wings which were much less perfect as 

 flying organs than those of modern birds. It seems pretty plain 

 that the bones in that antique bird were much less rigidly fixed 

 together, and it is equally clear that the fingers were very much 

 more loosely attached to one another. They were also more on an 

 equality as regards size ; the great disparity evident in fig. 12 is 

 not to be seen in the Archseopteryx. All this, of course, shows that the 

 Archseopteryx could not have possessed the ample pinion of its more 

 vigorous descendants of to-day. The fossil Archseopteryx looks a 

 little like a crow would look after receiving at close quarters a charge 

 of duck shot ; but a closer examination will show that in reality all 



III 



P.m. 



Fio. 10. WING OF YOUNG FOWL OF SAME AGE AS FIG. 9 (OF Wras o 



OPISTHOCOMUS). (After Pycraft in ' Natural Science.') 



The hand is shorter, and not fitted to be a grasping organ. 



the bones are there, on one side at least. Out of the disjecta membra 

 of the fossil numerous ' restorations ' have been put together, which 

 are as diverse as the minds which imagined them. We cannoi 

 really say with certainty what were the precise relations of the 

 hand to the feathers. It seems most probable that the hand of this 

 ' mediaeval ' bird still retained the ordinary functions of a hand ; 

 that it served its possessor to lay hold of convenient branches, from 

 which it fluttered feebly to others. One bold speculator has insisted 

 upon the probability that the Archseopteryx had the requisite five 

 fingers of the presumed ancestral type ; but there are no traces of 

 them, except in so far as the lie of the feathers enables a hint to be 

 gathered. Boring operations, or at least prospecting in the interior 

 of the stony slab on which the fossil lies, might reveal some 

 additional fingers ; but the operation would be fraught with too 



