82 SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 
mouth, has hitherto been met with. To this order belongs the Rynchosauroid 
reptile, from the Elgin sandstone, with palatal teeth, called Hyperodapedon, by 
Prof. Huxley. 
Order VI. Pterosauria.-_-Although some members of the preceding rder re- 
sembled birds in the shape or the edentulous state of the mouth, the reptiles of 
the present order make a closer approach to the feathered class in the texture and 
and pneumatic character of most of the bones, and in the modification of the pec- 
toral limbs for the function of flight. This is due to the elongation of the ante- 
brachial bones, and more especially to the still greater length of the metacarpal 
and phalangial bones of the fifth or outermost digit, the last phalanx of which 
terminates in a point. The other fingers were of more ordinary length and size, 
and were terminated by claws, the number of their phalanges progressively 
increasing to the fourth, which had four joints. The whole osseous system is 
modified in accordance with the possession of wings: the bones are light, hollow, 
most of them permeated by air-cells, with thin, compact outer walls. The scapula 
and coronoid are long and narrow, but strong. The vertebra of the neck are few 
but large and strong,—for the support of a large head with long jaws, armed with 
sharp-pointed teeth. The skuil was lightened by large vacuities, of which one was 
interposed between the nostril and the orbit. The vertebrae of the back are small 
as are those of the sacrum, which were from two to five in number, but combined 
vith a small pelvis and weak hind-limbs, bespeaking a creature unable to stand 
and walk like a bird; the body must have been dragged along the ground like that 
of a bat.. The vertebral bodies were united by ball-and-socket joints, the cup being 
anterior, and in them we have the earliest manifestation of the * proccelian ” type 
of vertebra. The Pterosauria are distributed into genera according to modifica- 
tions of the jaws and teeth. In the oldest known species, from the lias, the teeth 
are of two kinds: a few, at the fore part of the jaws, are long, large, sharp-pointed, 
with a full elliptical base, in distinct and separated sockets; behind them isa 
close-set row of short, compressed, very small, lancet-shaped teeth. These form 
the genus Dimor phodon, Ow. In the genus Ramphorynchus, V. M., the fore par- 
of each jaw is without teeth, and may have been incased by a horny beak; but 
behind the edentulous production there are four or five large and long Hath fol- 
lowed by several smaller ones. The tail is long, stiff, and slender. In the genus 
Pterodactylus, Cuv., the jaws are provided with teeth to thei extremities ; all the 
teeth are long, slender, sharp-pointed, set well apart. The tail is very short. P. 
longirostris, Ok., about ten inches in length. From lithographic slate at Pappen- 
heim, P. crassirostris, Goldf., about one foot long, P. Sedgwicki, Ow., from the 
greensand, with an expanse of wing of twenty feet, exemplify the Prerodactyles 
proper. The oldest well-known Pterodactyle is the Dimor ‘phodon macronyx of 
the lower lias; but bones of Pterodactyle have been discovered in coeval lias of 
Wirtemberg. The next in point of age is the Dimprphodon Banthensis, from the 
“ Posidonomyen-Schiefer ” of Banz in Bavaria, answering to the alum shale of the 
Whitby lias. Then follows the P. Buckland, from the Stonesfield oolite. Above 
this come the first-defined and numerous species of Pterodactyle from the litho- 
graphic slates of the middle oolitic system in Germany, and from Cirin on the 
Rhone. The Pterodactyles of the Wealden are, as yet, known to us by only a few 
