Monograph on Dimorphodon. 143 
of the vertebral column less of a crocodilian bias. If its 
procclous character is reptilian, its pneumatic character is 
a 
of Ornithocheirus. It would seem a very simple matter to 
i 7i Certainly some- 
thing very similar to the postcoracoid lateral emargination of 
Ornithocheirus occurs, among birds, in the Merganser. d 
wherein the distinctive and essential crocodilian characters of 
the sternum consist I cannot discover. It is not in the dis- 
justify. 
Passing on to the carpus, it is said :—“ A carpus with one 
large and one small bone in a proximal row, and with a second 
large and at least one smaller bone in a distal row, is another 
character by which the Pterodactyles manifest their closer 
affinity to reptiles than to birds. The remains of the gigantic 
species from the Cambridge Greensand have yielded the cha- 
racters of the two larger carpal ossicles.” I some time since 
pointed out that the carpal bone which Prof. Owen named 
scapho-cuneiform, and regarded as the proximal row, is really 
the distal, while the bone which was supposed to be d 18 
proximal. Osteologically a mistake of this kind is hard to 
avoid; but it is of considerable importance, since it would in- 
volve regarding the back of the hand as the front, and the 
“ little finger” as the index finger. To the talon"of the distal 
carpal was attached the lateral carpal or pisiform bone which, 
as in Chrysochloris, supported the third bone of the forearm. 
The distal carpal shows the articular surface for the meta- 
