FOSSIL FEATHERS AND UNDESCRIBED FOSSIL BIRDS 637 
Unfortunately, in this specimen everything anterior to the 
posterior margin of either orbit was not obtained by the collector; 
so it is quite impossible to state positively that this bird was a 
“Fringilline” bird. Indeed, Dr. Allen himself states in his paper 
that ‘the absence of the bill renders it impossible to assign the 
species to any particular family” (p. 443). By the aid of my 
camera I made a somewhat reduced copy of the plate illustrating 
this contribution, and it is here reproduced as Fig. 8, with the 
additional figure beside it as in the original. 
With respect to the fossil feathers here shown, Dr. Allen further 
states: 
The specimen bears also remarkably distinct impressions of the wings 
and tail, indicating not only the general form of these parts, but even the 
shafts and barbs of the feathers... . . The most remarkable feature of the 
specimen is the definiteness of the feather impressions. Both the shafts and 
barbs are shown with great distinctness in the rectrices, and the tips of the 
primaries of one wing are also sharply defined, overlying the edge of the partly 
expanded tail. The tip of the opposite wing can also be seen beneath the tail. 
Another specimen from the same locality, and probably representing the 
same species, consists of the tip of the tail and about the apical third of a half- 
expanded wing [here shown in the smaller slab in Fig. 8]. In this example 
the tail is also pointed and graduated. About seven of the outer primaries 
of the wing are shown with great distinctness, and two others can be easily 
made out. The third primary is the longest; the second is slightly shorter; 
the first and fourth are about equal. There are also in the collection three 
detached contour feathers of small size, but whether pertaining to the same 
species as the other specimens cannot, of course, be determined. 
From near the same locality, Dr. Allen, in 1871, obtained a 
few distinct impressions of feathers from the same Florissant 
shales; but he, in so far as I am aware, never published a specific 
description of them. 
When visiting at my home in the spring of 1913, Mr. Cockerell 
informed me‘that it was not a rare event to meet with fossil feathers 
in those beds similar to the ones here shown in Figs. 5 and 6. 
It was Dr. F. V. Hayden, in 1869 I believe, who discovered the 
first fossil feather of a bird in North America, it having been 
obtained in the fresh-water Tertiary deposits of Green River, 
Wyo.—a locality where so many fossils have been collected. 
Marsh described this specimen as “the distal portion of a large 
